240 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
be willing to look about them and collect. Not only was 
every contribution courteously acknowledged, both in 
private and in public, and such apparatus as the collector 
did not possess furnished him, but books (especially, of 
course, Smithsonian reports and publications of the 
Smithsonian) would be sent. All this was not a matter 
covering a year or two, but beginning with my father’s 
first connection with the Smithsonian and lasting during 
the entire thirty-seven years of his association with it. 
No man ever labored more sedulously to amass a private 
fortune, or to further his personal ends, than did my 
father to carry out his unselfish purposes for the Museum. 
‘‘Any one who remembers my father’s magnetic per- 
sonal qualities, which led him to kindle in others his 
own enthusiasm, will feel how much this did in forwarding 
the work he had at heart. He inspired those whom he 
met with so much confidence in himself and in the im- 
portance of the work which he urged, he had so clear an 
idea of what he was aiming at and could make it so clear 
to others, he was so well able to find good and efficient 
methods and to bring to bear upon the object desired 
all external aids, that it is hardly possible, it seems to me, 
for any one who does not remember him, to fully realize 
how much his own personality had to do with the accom- 
plishment of the work which he did himself, and that 
which was done by others under his direction. 
“During his summer vacations, up to the time when 
the Fish Commission work absorbed his leisure almost 
entirely, he always took with him more or less scientific 
work, taking specimens to be studied to whatever point 
he had selected for his summer resting place—if this 
could be called rest—and, of course, keeping up his large 
correspondence. I remember very well how in the ab- 
