172 The Smithsonian Institution 



mammals. The greatest of living American mammalogists 

 said to the writer not long ago, that in his work to-day, when 

 he had a description by Baird before him, he did not deem 

 it essential to examine the specimen to which it related ; 

 something, he added, which he could not say about any other 

 writer.^ 



In the field of herpetology Professor Baird was still more 

 of a pioneer, and, with the exception of Cope, to whom he 

 resigned the field in 1859, as his chosen successor, his formal 

 memoirs in this department were more extensive than those 

 of any other. In his day material did not exist for a compre- 

 hensive work covering the entire continent, but in his elab- 

 orate reports upon the collections of the transcontinental sur- 

 veys, and in his catalogue of North American Serpents in 

 the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in 

 his scattered papers, he very nearly covered the same field 

 which was occupied by his two great volumes on birds and 

 mammals. 



Nearly two hundred new species and numerous new genera 

 of reptiles were discovered and named by him, either under 

 his own name or in association with his assistant, Charles 

 Girard. To illustrate the fundamental character of this work, 

 it may be said that when the great collection of snakes, con- 

 taining several thousand specimens, was taken up for study, 

 each specimen was individualized by attaching a number tag, 

 which served as a key to its locality. They were all then 

 thrown into one great pile, and by a process of compari- 

 son with absolute disregard for what had previously been 

 written, assorted, first into families, then into genera, and then 



1 To illustrate his methods of work and writing July, 1858, and printing October, 



the facility which he acquired with practice, 1858; having in the last instance written 



it may be stated that he began the mammal about two thousand quarto pages of original 



volume in Elizabethtown, New York, August, matter of the most technical character within 



1853, and finished printing July, 1857; he a period of eleven months, and put it through 



began the bird book in August, 1857, finished the press in the three which followed. 



