spknceu p. baird. 741 



Baird ; lie must also have tlie treasures of tln^ sea, and so he organized 

 a lish eoniniission, with its great laboratories and vessels of research. 



What liid'st thou in the trcasurc-caves and colls, 

 Thou hollow sounding and mysterious main ? 

 Pale, glistening pearls and rainbow-colored shells, 

 Bright things which gleam unreck'd of, and in vain. 

 Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea! 

 We ask not such from thee. 



What the scholar asked of the sea was all its forms of life, its organ- 

 isms minute and lowly, its crawling articulates, its pearl-housed mol- 

 lusks, its fishes that swim in armies, and its leviathans that prowl 

 among the waves — the life of the reedy shore, the life of the ocean- 

 current, and the life of the deep sea. Thus with many ingenious appli- 

 ances, he and his lieutenants sailed away to explore the ocean's 

 mystery. 



So the Fish Commission was an agency of research ; but it was more, — 

 he made it an agency by which science is applied to the relief of the 

 wants of mankind, — by which a cheap, nutritious, healthful, and luxur- 

 ious food is to be given to the millions of men. He affirmed that for 

 the production of food an acre of water is more than equal to 10 acres 

 of land, thns giving to the gloomy doctrine of Malthus its ultimate refu- 

 tation, and tearing away the veil of despair from the horizon of the 

 poor ; for, when the sea shall serve man with all the food that can be 

 gathered from its broad expanse, the laud can not contain the millions 

 whom it is thus possible to supjily. 



In the research thus organized the materials for the work of other 

 scientific men were gathered. When a great genius reads to the world 

 a chai)ter from the book of nature the story is so beautiful that many 

 are stimulated to search in the same field for other chapters of the same 

 story. Thus it was that the publication of Baird's great works on 

 natural history developed in America a great corps of naturalists, 

 many of whom have become illustrious, and the stimulus of his work 

 was felt throughout Europe. In the research which he organized the 

 materials were furnished for this corps of naturalists ; but his agency 

 in the development of this bod^'^ of workers was even more direct. He 

 incited the men personally to undertake and continuously to prosecute 

 their investigations. He enlisted the men himself, he trained them 

 himself, he himself furnished them with the materials andinstrumentsof 

 research, and best of all, he was their guide and great exemplar. Thus 

 it was that the three institutions over which he presided, — the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, the N"ational Museum, and the Fish Commission — 

 were woven into one great organization, — a university of instruction in 

 the methods of scientific research, including in its scope the entire field 

 of biology and anthropology. Su(;h is Baird the investigator, Baird 

 the organizer, and Baird the instructor, in the length breadth and 

 height of his genius, the solidarity of a great man. 



