722 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. 



The appointment was unanimously confirmed by the Board July 5, 

 1850, and Professor Baird being notified, at once accepted and entered 

 upon his new duties. He deposited in the Museum his own valuable 

 collections, comprising an extensive series of the skins of various 

 mammals (European as well as American), a large number of bird skins 

 (unmounted), representing abouc five hundred American species and 

 half as many European species, a rich variety of birds' nests and birds' 

 eggs, more than five hundred glass jars, tin vessels, and kegs contain- 

 ing alcoholic specimens of reptiles and fishes, and a number of verte- 

 brate skeletons and of fossil remains. 



The new Assistant Secretary was truly in his element, and showed 

 himself pre-eminently " the right man in the right placii." In Henry's 

 Fourth Annual Report (that for J 850), after recording the appointment 

 of his Assistant, he adds : " He entered on his duties in July last and, 

 besides being actively engaged in organizing the department of natural 

 history, he has rendered important service in conducting our foreign 

 exchanges and attending to the business of the press." 



The Smithsonian system of exchanges was instituted for the purpose 

 of facilitating the reciprocal transmission between the Old World and 

 the New of the memoirs of learned socities, and this system has become 

 an essential agency in the interchange and diffusion of knowledge, and 

 in the more rapid advancement ot scientific discovery, by a wider and 

 prompter co-operation. Previous to this inauguration such distant 

 scientific information was so rarely and inconveniently accessible 

 largely through the delays and harassmeuts of customs exactions, that 

 important principles had not unfrequently been re-discovered abroad 

 or at home, and sometimes with a considerable interval of time, to 

 subsequently disturb and dispute a coveted and settled priority. 



By the urgent zeal of the Smithsonian Di rector, representing to foreign 

 powers that only gratuitous distribution of the literary and scientific 

 memoirs of societies or of individuals (not usually found on sale) was un- 

 dertaken by the Institution, and that no commercial enterprise calcu- 

 lated in any way to interfere with the legitimate operations of trade was 

 attempted, one port after another was opened to its packages, until in 

 the course of a few years, the announcement was made that the Smith- 

 sonian exchanges were allowed to pass through every custom-house on 

 earth, unopened and unquestioned. 



Creditable as this special liberality is, it has not yet, unfortunately, 

 been applied to the customary channels of book lore, and the quest for 

 knowledge is still held by a majority of civilized nations as an indulgence 

 very proper to be taxed. Our own legislators have also made our higher 

 education a source of revenue; possibly with a view to the ''incidental 

 protection" of American science by the heavy tariff laid on the foreign 

 and imported article. 



The advantage to the cause of science from this Smithsonian system 

 of international exchange of intellectual products, free of duty, and with 



