A LIFE RECORD 43 



Bay Company. In transmitting them to Mr. Boardman, 

 Prof. Joseph Henry, then secretary of the Smithsonian, 

 said in his letter of June 17, 1864 : "They embrace skins 

 of some of the rarest of American birds and we have 

 thought proper, in accordance with our general policy, 

 to make a distribution of the duplicates to such museums 

 as would be most likely to value and make good use of 

 them." It was a distinguished consideration on the 

 part of officials of the Smithsonian to place these dupli- 

 cates of rare specimens in a private rather than a public 

 museum, and was a recognition of Mr. Boardman's stand- 

 ing as a naturalist as well as a partial return for his ser- 

 vices to the Smithsonian Institution. It was an honor, 

 too, which Mr. Boardman highly appreciated. His 

 studies of this collection of skins and his subsequent 

 studies at the Smithsonian gave Mr. Boardman that 

 knowledge of arctic ornithology which placed him in 

 the front rank among naturalists familiar with arctic 

 bird-life. 



Mr. Boardman had met Prof. Baird at Washington in 

 the early spring of 1860 and also in 1862. In a letter to 

 Mr. Boardman, dated November 19, 1862, Prof. Baird 

 commences it by saying : "I look forward with much 

 pleasure one day to meeting you way up in New Bruns- 

 wick ; when — I dare not say." This pleasure was not 

 realized, however, until nearly three years later. Dur- 

 ing the year 1865 Prof. Baird and his family spent the 

 summer at Eastport, Maine — which was their summer 

 home for many years afterward — and on August 10 he 

 visited Mr. Boardman at St. Stephen, N. B., for the first 

 time. It must have been a very happy meeting as it was 

 the commencement of a close and intimate friendship 



