SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



ZOOLOGIST 



1823-1887 

 BY CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER 



IN the introduction to Professor G. Brown Goode's Bibliography 

 of Professor Baird, published under direction of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, I find the following lines referring to his portrait, 

 which is slipped into, but not bound in the volume: "Professor 

 Baird having refused to allow it to be inserted in this work, it 

 will be distributed separately to as many recipients of the Bibli- 

 ography as is practical to reach. Those who received it are re- 

 quested to attach it permanently to copies of the book." 



Professor Goode doubtless did not intend it, but he could not 

 have written a more speaking panegyric on the character of Pro- 

 fessor Baird had he tried, nor can I do better than to quote it, to 

 illustrate what always impressed me as one of the most charming 

 qualities of the great naturalist and organizer, his^ modesty. 



This virtue does not always indicate greatness, but in this in- 

 stance it did, and in an acquaintance with Professor Baird, which 

 extended over many years, it ^ vays seemed to me to be a domi- 

 nant factor in all the acts of his career. 



In the correspondence of my father, dating back to 1846, I 

 find voluminous letters from Spencer F. Baird, asking for Dr. 

 Holder's lists of the birds, mammals and plants of Essex County, 

 Massachusetts, and offering his own lists of the same near Reading, 

 Pennsylvania, in return, and out of this correspondence grew a 

 friendship which held through life between the two men. My 

 first impression of Professor Baird came in the fall of 1859 when 

 we were on the way to the Florida reef. Professors Baird and 



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