Vii 
1850 TO 1865 
retary his Journals are even more brief in their 
references to each day’s work than before. This 
was natural, as he was intensely busy, with practically no 
assistance at first, and for several months hampered by 
illness of his wife and daughter. 
The correspondence relating to his early activities in 
promoting the scientific side of Government exploration, 
so far as it was official was destroyed in the Smithsonian 
fire of 1865. This included nearly all Baird’s own letters. 
The material available to the biographer is thus confined 
almost entirely to such letters to Professor Baird as he 
regarded as personal, and which at the time of the fire 
were in his private files; the curt annotations in his Journal; 
and the evidence of his publications. 
The scope of this biography does not include a detailed 
history of the various expeditions sent out by the Govern- 
ment between 1850 and 1861. This would extend far 
beyond the limits assigned for the present volume, and 
require a study of documents and official records for which 
the present biographer has neither the time nor the 
strength. It is a work well worthy the attention of an 
historian. Probably no other Government, in the same 
number of years, has added so much to geographical and 
scientific knowledge. That the scientific were added to 
the immediately practical details and simultaneously pub- 
lished, is almost entirely due to the influence exerted by 
248 
. FTER Professor Baird’s installation as Assistant Sec- 
