706 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 



volved such a vast amount of field work as to remove Professor 

 Baird from the limbo of so-called "closet-naturalists." How pleasant 

 and instructive to liim must have been his out-of-door studies of birds 

 may be inferred from the extent of his excursions, which are thus de- 

 scribed by Mr. Goode : 



"In 1841, at the age of eighteen, we find him making an ornithologi- 

 cal excursion through the mountains of Pennsylvania, walking four 

 hundred miles in twenty-one days, the last day sixty miles betMcen day- 

 light and rest.* The following year he walked more than 2,200 miles. 

 His fine physique and consequent capacity for work are doubtless due 

 in part to his outdoor life during these years." 



Considering Professor Baird's great interest in the study of birds, the 

 number of his ornithological publications is astonishingly small, amount- 

 ing to only seventy-nine different titles (see Mr. Goode's Bibliography, 

 pp. 250-253). It is, therefore, strikingly evident that his publications 

 must have possessed unusual merit to earn for him so great a reputation 

 as ar. ornithologist. This reputation was indeed established by the first 

 of his separate works, usually known and quoted as "The Birds of North 

 ja.merica," though not published under this title until two years after its 

 publication by the Government as volume ix of the "E-eport of Explo- 

 rations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical 

 route for a Kailroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean." 

 With the publication, in 1858, of this great quarto volume of more than 

 one thousand pages, began what my distinguished colleague, Professor 

 Coues, has fitly termed the " Bairdian Period" of American ornithology — 

 a period covering almost thirty years and characterized by an activity 

 of ornithological research and rapidityofadvancement without a parallel 

 in the history of the science. Referring to this great work, in his " Bib- 

 liographical Appendix" to "Birds of the Colorado Valley" (page 650), 

 Professor Coues says : " It represents the most important single step ever 

 taken in the progress of American ornithology in all that relates to the 

 technicalities. The nomenclature is entirely re-modelled from that of the 

 immediately preceding Audubonian period, and for the first time brought 

 abreast of the then existing aspect of the case. - - - The synon- 

 ymy of the work is more extensive and elaborate and more reliable 

 than any before presented; the compilation was almost entirely original, 

 very few citations having been made at second-hand, and these being 

 indicated by quotation marks. The general text consists of diagnoses 

 or descriptions of each species, with extended and elaborate criticisms, 

 comparisons, and commentary. - - - The appearance of so great a 

 work, from the hands of a most methodical, learned, and sagacious 

 naturalist, aided by two of the leading ornithologists of America (John 

 Cassin and George N. Lawrence), exerted an influence perhaps stronger 

 and more wiflely felt than that of any of its predecessors, Audubon's 



* Professor Baird iuformed the writer that he had once, in a pedestrian contest, 

 walked forty miles in eight consecutive hours. 



