280 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



Professor Baird represented a sturdy American type. He came 

 of a sterling people who came to this country in the seventeenth 

 century. During the war of the Revolution his grandfather, the 

 Rev. Elihu Spencer of Trenton, was so potent a factor for inde- 

 pendence that the British put a price on his head, and both branches 

 of the family were conspicuous for their services to the people, 

 the state and their country. 



Professor Baird married Mary Helen Churchill in 1846, the 

 only daughter of Sylvester Churchill, Inspector General, U. S. A. 

 Mrs. Baird was a woman of high culture and marked intelligence, 

 who had a strong influence upon her husband's life and work, 

 while his daughter, Miss Baird, was in close sympathy and com- 

 panionship with her distinguished father and was a constant and 

 indispensable aid to him, in all of his many and diverse interests. 



The seaside laboratory at Woods Hole, the summer head- 

 quarters of the United States Fish Commission, was of peculiar 

 interest to Professor Baird, as one of the results of his comprehen- 

 sive grasp upon the great plan of zoological work in connection 

 with the government, and it was here that he passed the last period 

 of his active life. For some time he had been failing, and his 

 physicians ordered a complete rest; Professor Langley assumed 

 charge of the Smithsonian, and Dr. Goode of the National Museum, 

 and the great organizer, the man who had reared the great insti- 

 tution for the people, stepped aside into the shadow of a coming 

 change. It was hoped that he would rally, that the wasted ener- 

 gies would be restored, but this was not realized and in the summer 

 of 1887, with intellect still clear and unimpaired, amid the scenes 

 of his greatest triumphs at what his friend Major Powell fitly 

 termed the greatest "biological laboratory of the world," reared 

 by his hands, planned by him, he passed into history revered, 

 mourned, honored as few men have been in this or any land. 



I shall not attempt to sum up the value of his work or its relation 

 to the present or to posterity. I have sounded his virtues in passing 

 as they have occurred to me in this brief review of his life, but it 

 seems fitting to add the words of his well-beloved friend and 

 colleague, Professor G. Brown Goode: "Future historians of 



