SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 271 



tory of the Smithsonian and National Museum comes to be written 

 it can be said that the foundation of the splendid museums of 

 these institutions was largely laid by young Baird in this period. 

 He was a powerful, robust specimen of young manhood, an assidu- 

 ous collector with a strong intuition for the work, and with abnor- 

 mal perceptions for one of his age; hence he accomplished much 

 in his tremendous walks of from twenty to fifty miles a day across 

 country, not only laying the foundation for an exalted scientific 

 career, but for a constitution which served him well in later years, 

 when he was obliged to renounce field-work and assume the head 

 of the great lines of special scientific research which his active mind 

 conceived, and brought into being. Professor Baird at this period 

 not only made remarkable collections in a variety of fields, but 

 he began an extraordinary system of exchanges with naturalists 

 all over the country, which later on formed the basis for the fine 

 and far-reaching system of exchanges which became a policy of 

 the Smithsonian and National Museums. When he was twenty- 

 two years of age, he was tendered the chair of Natural History at 

 Dickinson College, and later his duties also included the chair of 

 Chemistry and up to 1850 he was the recipient of many honors; 

 in that year, when but twenty-seven years of age, being offered 

 the assistant secretaryship of the Smithsonian Institution, which 

 he accepted. 



The motto of James Smithson, the one which he gave to the 

 Institution which bears his name, was "the increase and diffusion 

 of useful knowledge among men," and that Professor Baird 

 adopted this and followed it closely is evident to any one who 

 will seriously study the quality of his life-work, as it differs 

 from that of almost any scientist of the century. His original 

 researches were brilliant and far-reaching, but his greatest work, 

 his best energies were exerted along those lines that produce 

 results of practical benefit to the human race. To illustrate 

 my meaning, the works of Agassiz, his discoveries among fos- 

 sil fishes, his elaborate books on glaciers and their causes were 

 of inestimable value to science, but Professor Baird's work 

 in the United States Fish Commission alone was of far more 



