The Three Secretaries 165 



he made some curious experiments upon himself. At night, 

 after carrying a load of forty pounds for ten miles, he mea- 

 sured five feet eleven and a quarter inches, and the next 

 morning six feet, showing that his height had been com- 

 pressed by weight three quarters of an inch. 



His home studies were carried on for a number of years, 

 and were scarcely interrupted by his election in 1846 to the 

 chair of natural history and chemistry in Dickinson College. 

 In this capacity he taught the seniors physiology ; the sopho- 

 mores, geometry ; freshmen, zoology ; and the preparatory 

 students, something else. He found time, however, to carry 

 on the work begun in previous years and to make each sum- 

 mer an extended collecting expedition: in 1847, ^^ ^^^ Adi- 

 rondacks; in 1848, to Ohio, to collect, in company with Doctor 

 Kirtland, from the original localities of the types, the species 

 described by him in his work on the fishes of Ohio; in 1849, 

 to the mountains of Virginia, with C. B. R. Kennedy; and in 

 1850, to Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario. 



He remained in Carlisle until 1850, and there he married, 

 in 1846, Mary Helen Churchill, the daughter of General Syl- 

 vester Churchill, Inspector-General United States Army. He 

 used to say that his wife won his heart as a girl by the beau- 

 tiful labels she wrote for his collections, and she was always 

 afterward his companion and assistant in his work. 



The coming of Agassiz to America in 1846 was an inspira- 

 tion to the young naturalist. One of the first great works 

 projected by the Swiss savant was a memoir upon the fresh- 

 water fishes of North America, in the authorship of which 

 Professor Baird was to be his associate — a work which was 

 never completed. 



Agassiz did not establish himself in Cambridge until 1848, 

 and to Baird should belong the credit of having introduced 

 into American schools the system of laboratory practice and 



