REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 11 



birth of Spencer Fullerton Baird, second secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, the virtual founder of the United States National 

 Museum, the creator and head of the United States Fish Commis- 

 sion, and a prime mover in the establishment of the United States 

 Geological Survey and the Bureau of American Ethnology. The 

 meeting was presided over by Representative Frank L. Greene, a 

 member of the Board of Regents of the Institution, and the following 

 addresses were delivered : " Baird, the man," by Dr. William Healey 

 Dall; "Baird and the Smithsonian Institution and its branches," 

 by Dr. Charles G. Abbot; " Baird at Woods Hole," by Prof. Edwin 

 Linton; "Baird and the Fisheries," by Prof. David Starr Jordan; 

 and " Baird, the Naturalist," by Dr. C. Hart Merriam. 



In the afternoon, preceding the formal celebration, the National 

 Baird Memorial Committee met in the National Museum to decide 

 upon the form of the memorial or memorials to Baird. The com- 

 mittee was composed of delegates appointed by 54 scientific societies 

 and institutions from various parts of the country, with the follow- 

 ing officers: 



Honorary president, Dr. William H. Dall ; president, Dr. Charles 



D. Walcott ; vice presidents, Mr. George R. Agassiz, Dr. Alexander 

 Graham Bell (deceased), Prof. Frank W. Clarke, Prof. Stephen 

 A. Forbes; Prof. David Starr Jordan, Prof. Edwin Linton, Prof. 

 Edward S. Morse, Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Prof. Addison 



E. Verrill, and Dr. Robert S. Woodward; secretary, Dr. Paul 

 Bartsch. At this afternoon meeting it was announced that appro- 

 priate exercises were held during the morning, when wreaths were 

 placed on the grave of Baird in Oak Hill Cemetery, the bust of 

 Baird in the American Museum of Natural History, the Baird 

 memorial bowlder of the American Fisheries Society at Woods 

 Hole, and the Baird memorial tablet at the Bureau of Fisheries 

 Building in Washington, and that the mayor of Reading, Pa., had 

 been requested to decorate the house in which Baird was born. 



The report of the national committee, announced at the evening 

 meeting, is as follows: 



1. That Congress be memorialized to establish in the city of 

 Washington a museum of fisheries and oceanography, with labora- 

 tories and a public aquarium, as a memorial to Spencer Fullerton 

 Baird. 



2. That there be established a fund for the encouragement of 

 research and exploration in the directions in which Spencer Fuller- 

 ton Baird was a leader. 



3. It was the sense of the meeting that the name of Baird be given 

 to the laboratory of the Bureau of Fisheries at Woods Hole, Mass. 



