iSSS.J Sj'ct/ccr Fullerlou Balid. C 



pleasant and instructive to him must have been his out-of-doov 

 studies of birds, may be inferred from the extent of his excursions, 

 which are thus described by Mr. Goode : 



"In 1S41, at the age of eighteen, we find him making an 

 ornithological excursion through the mountains of Pennsylvania, 

 walking four hundred miles in twenty-one days, the last day 

 sixty miles between daylight and rest.* The following year he 

 walked more than 2,200 miles. His fine physique and con- 

 sequent capacity for work are doubtless due in j^art to his out- 

 door life during these years." 



Considering Professor Baird's great interest in the study of 

 birds, the number of his ornithological publications is astonish- 

 ingly small, amounting to only seventy-nine different titles (see 

 Mr. Goode's Bibliography, pp. 250-253). It is, therefore, strik- 

 ingly evident that his publications must have possessed unusual 

 merit to earn for him so great a reputation as an ornithologist. 

 This reputation was indeed established 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 its 

 publication by the Government as Volume IX of the ' Report 

 of Explorations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable 

 and economical route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River 

 to the Pacific Ocean.' With the publication, in 1S5S, 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 rapidity of advancement without a 

 parallel in the history of the science. Referring to this great 

 work, in his 'Bibliographical 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 Ameri- 

 can ornithology in all that relates to the technicalities. The 

 nomenclature is entirely remodelled from that of the immediately 

 preceding Audubonian period, and for the first time brought 

 abreastofthe then existing aspect of the case. . . . The synonymy of 

 the work is more extensive and elaborate and more reliable than 

 any before presented ; the compilation was almost entirely original, 



*Professor Baird informedthe writer that he had once, in a pedestrian contest, walked 

 forty miles in eight consecutive hours. 



