6 Spencer Fnllerto)! Baird. [January 



very few citations having been made at second-hand, and these 

 being indicated by quotation marks. The general text consists 

 of diagnoses or descriptions of each species, with extended and 



ehxborate criticisms, comparisons, and commentary The 



appearance of so great a work, from the hands of a mostmethodical, 

 learned, and sagacious naturalist, aided by two of the leading 

 ornithologists of America [John Cassin and George N. Law- 

 rence], exerted an influence perhaps stronger and more widely 

 felt than that of any of its predecessors, Audubon's and Wilson's 

 not excepted, and marked an epoch in the history of American 

 ornithology. The synomymy and specific characters, original 

 in tliis work, have been used again and again by subsequent 

 writers, with various modifications and abridgment, and are in 

 fact a large basis of the technical portion of the subsequent 

 'History of North American Birds' by Baird, Brewer, and Ridg- 

 way. Such a monument of original research is likely to remain 

 for an indefinite period a source of inspiration to lesser writers, 

 while its authority as a work of reference will always endure." 



Thus are graphically described the distinctive features of what 

 Mr. Leonhard Stejneger has truthfully termed the Bairdian 

 School * of ornithology, a school strikingly characterized by 

 peculiar exactness in dealing with facts, conciseness in expressing 

 deductions, and careful analysis of the subject in its various bear- 

 ings — methods so radically different from those of the older 

 'European School' that, as the esteemed member whom we have 

 just named has already remarked, f conclusions or arguments can 

 be traced back to their source and tlius properly weighed, whereas 

 the latter affords no basis for analysis. In other words, as Mr. 

 Stejneger has, in substance, said, the European School requires 

 the investigator to accept an author's statements and conclusions 

 on his personal responsibility alone, while the Bairdian furnishes 

 him with tangible fiicts from which to take his deductions. 



The dominant sources of Professor Baird's training in syste- 

 matic ornithology are not difficult to trace ; in fact, the bases of his 

 classifications are so fully explained or frequently mentioned in 

 his various works as to leave nothing to mere inference. He 

 studied carefully the more advanced systems of his time, and 

 with unerring instinct selected from them their best features, 



*• Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Vol. VII, 1884, p. 76. 



