EXECUTOR’S FOREWORD 
At her residence in Philadelphia on June 19, 1913, 
died Miss Lucy Hunter Baird, the only child of Professor 
Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution of Washington and the organizer 
and first Commissioner of the United States Commission 
of Fish and Fisheries, who died at the biological station 
of the Commission at Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts, on 
August 19, 1887. 
It had been the wish of Miss Baird, who had been 
the close and constant companion and confidant of her 
father from early childhood to the time of his death, to 
personally prepare his biography. ‘This was delayed, 
first, by the confirmed illness of her mother, to whose 
care and comfort was given all her time and effort till 
the death of Mrs. Baird, on December 23, 1891; and, 
secondly, by the state of her own health, which prevented 
the continuous application needed to bring the contem- 
plated memoir to completion. In the interval, however, 
she had brought together and partially arranged many 
data relating to her father’s life. Fearing that she would 
be unable to complete the memoir she devised all her 
own and her father’s papers to the executor of her will 
with the request “‘to see that this memoir be completed 
by a suitable and competent person.” Having during 
the last ten years or more of Professor Baird’s life been 
one of his assistants, both in the Smithsonian Institution 
and the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 
and the recipient of many kindnesses from himself and 
family and of frequent hospitalities at their home, and 
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