734 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. 



America north of Mexico, except the bats and the truly pelagic forms — 

 whales, sea-cows, and seals. The total number of known species was 

 increased nearly twenty-five per cent. 



In fullness of synonymy, and in the correct assignment of species pre- 

 viously described, Professor Baird was much in advance of previous 

 workers. The descriptions, which are models of painstaking accuracy 

 and precision, are taken from the specimens themselves, and are accom- 

 panied by long tables of measurements, the value of which more than 

 justifies the enormous expenditure of time necessary in their prepara- 

 tion. Much more attention was paid to craniological characters than 

 had been the custom with previous writers, which fact contributes 

 largely to the permanent value of the work. 



Professor Baird's loog training as a careful observer, his power of 

 concentrating his knowledge of matters under investigation, the 

 wide scope of his information on nearly all departments of natural 

 science, his clear perception of details, together with his excellent 

 judgment, which was as marked in matters of minor detail as in those 

 requiring great executive ability, enabled him to draw conclusions 

 which subsequent accumulations of material have verified in a sur- 

 prising manner; in fact, his pre-eminent superiority as a systematic 

 zoologist is everywhere apparent. 



Birds. — When the great interest he took in birds is considered, and 

 the long period over which his studies extended, it is somewhat sur- 

 prising to find that the number of separate papers on ornithology pub- 

 lished by Professor Baird sums up only some seventy-nine titles. It 

 is less to their number that he owed his fame as an ornithologist than 

 to their quality, combined with the fact that several of these publica- 

 tions covered practically the entire field of North American ornithol- 

 ogy, and were of the nature of monographs. 



"His reputation was, indeed, established," says Ridgway, "by the 

 first of his separate works, usually known and quoted as the "Birds of 

 North America," though not published under this title until two years 

 after it had been i^rinted by the Government as Volume IX of the 

 Pacific Railroad Reports. With the publication of this great quarto 

 volume, containing more than a thousand pages, in 1868, began what 

 has been fitly termed by Dr. Elliott Coues the " Bairdian period " of 

 American ornithology. This period, covering almost thirty years, was 

 characterized by an activity in ornithological research aud a rapidity 

 of advancement without a parallel in the history of the science. 



Of the "Birds of North America" Coues states* that "it represents 

 the most important single step ever taken in the progress of American 

 ornithology in all that relates to the technicalities." The nomenclature 

 was entirely remodeled from that previously in current use, and for the 

 first time was brought abreast of the systematic acquirements of the 

 time. The synonymy of the work, in which is embodied the history of 



*Bibl. app. to the Birds of the Colorado Valley, p. 650. 



