210 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
Navy of the U. States and of other persons such assistance as you 
may think necessary for the accomplishment of the intended object. 
Respectfully your obed’t. servt. 
JoserH Henry, Secretary S. I. 
In response to a request for a personal conference 
Baird went on to Washington April 29th to see Professor 
Henry, and returned to Carlisle May 2nd. 
May 3rd, General and Mrs. Churchill and Samuel 
Baird left Carlisle for the West, the general being ordered 
on a tour of inspection of military posts ranging from 
Maine to Minnesota and Fort Leavenworth. Doctor 
T. M. Brewer” of Boston, and Mrs. Brewer came on a 
short visit to the Bairds. On the 24th Baird gave his 
last lecture of the session, and, as it turned out, his last 
at Dickinson College. 
From Joseph Henry to Spencer F. Baird. 
SMITHSONIAN InstTITUTION, May 28, 1850. 
My pear Sir:— 
I have just received your letter of the 25th. It would have been 
better had the engravings of the plates of the fishes been postponed 
until the manuscript was ready for publication, but this is not a 
matter of much consequence. 
I am much pleased with your proposition to prepare a manual 
of directions for collecting specimens. I think it will serve as a 
beginning of the more extended work which we contemplate prepar- 
*6 Thomas Mayo Brewer, M.D., born in Boston, Nov. 21, 1814, 
graduated at Harvard in 1835 and died in Boston, Jan. 23, 1880. 
He was eminent as an ornithologist and oologist, on which he pub- 
lished valuable works and with Baird and Robert Ridgway, joint 
author of their great work “‘A History of North American Birds” 
in 1874. He was a lifelong friend and coadjutor of Professor Baird, 
