270 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



Agassiz having induced Dr. Holder 1 to throw up a lucrative prac- 

 tice as a physician in Lynn, Massachusetts, and go to what in 

 all probability was the most desolate spot within the confines of 

 the government Garden Key, or Tortugas, to study the fauna in 

 the interests of science. We visited Professor Baird en route, and 

 I well remember his strong, robust personality, his kindly respon- 

 sive nature, the evident nobility of his character, his intense 

 interest in nature, and a certain sweetness of character, difficult 

 to associate with a man of heroic mold which found its expres- 

 sion in his innate modesty and purity of life. If I should be called 

 upon to paint a word-picture, to conjure up from the imagination 

 a figure which should fully represent the typical American as he 

 is, as he should be, to meet the ideals of a great and patriotic 

 people, the form and features, the character, the virtues, and intelli- 

 gence of Spencer F. Baird, would insensibly present themselves. 

 He was a typical American of a heroic type, a man of many parts, 

 ( virtues and intellectual graces, and of all the zoologists science 

 has given the world, it can doubtless be said, he was most pro- 

 lific in works of practical value to man and to humanity. 



Professor Baird belonged to the time of Agassiz, Huxley, Spen- 

 cer and Darwin, being but sixteen years younger than Agas- 

 siz, and came upon the field in a period notable for its activity 

 in science along many lines. Reading, Pennsylvania, claims him 

 as an honored son, where he was born February 3, 1823, and after 

 several years of public schools he entered Dickinson College, from 

 which he graduated at the age of seventeen. Like Agassiz and 

 Darwin, he was a born genius, with predilection for scientific pur- 

 suits and all his energies from early youth were expended along 

 these lines of thought and practice. 



Like Agassiz, he studied medicine, but never completed his 

 studies although he was given the degree of M.D. honoris causa 

 from the Philadelphia Medical College. 



During his early college days he attracted wide-spread attention 

 for his studies and observations in Nature, and when the true his- 



1 The late Joseph Bassett Holder, Curator of Zoology of the Museum of 

 Natural History, N. Y., from its founding to 1888. 



