1058 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
enlarged his house at an expense of many thousand dollars from the 
controlling motive of having more space for carrying on his Fish Com- 
mission work. From early morning until nearly noon he devoted him- 
self to itat his house constantly. He would then go to the Smithsonian 
Institution and spend several hours there in intense personal applica- 
tion and labor to his duties as assistant secretary and, after the death 
of Professor Henry, as secretary; and having fully performed all his 
duties there would return to his house and devote most of his evenings, 
and often far into the night again, to the work of the Fish Commission. 
I speak of all these details during these long years from intimate per- 
sonal knowledge of his course of life. He could almost never be per- 
suaded to take a holiday, when year after year his family and his inti- 
mate friends, who knew that he was overworking himself, would remon- 
strate and beg him to leave some share of these great responsibilities 
and exacting labors in other hands. The result with him was what 
many of his friends feared would happen—he literally worked himself 
to death in most valuable and meritorious and honorable service to the 
United States, the largest part of which was never contemplated nor 
provided for when his office of scientific investigation was created with- 
out a salary. 
In such a case it appears to me that both the dignity and the justice 
of the United States require that a suitable recognition of this unre- 
quited labor should be made to his widow, who has been for many 
years a great invalid, and who, with their daughter, is left in decidedly 
slender circumstances. i 
Here is a memorandum which I think was mostly made by Professor 
Baird himself about his work in the last year of his life, when he knew, 
and bis family did not know, that he was going to die, which I will 
read. Iam certain, privately, that Professor Baird left this memoran- 
dum, except perhaps the last word or two of it, among his papers for 
his wife. I will add that I dictated the paper, my own statement as a 
witness, without knowledge or recollection of the fact that such a mem- 
orandum as this existed. Then I came up again and asked Mr. Cleaves 
to let me see the papers, and I found this, which I had entirely forgotten. 
MEMORANDUM AS TO THE RELATIONSHIPS OF S. F. BAIRD TO THE U. S. FISH COM- 
MISSION. 
The Commission was established in 1871, with myself as Commissioner, solely for 
the purpose of investigating the alleged decrease of the food fishes of the seacoast 
and lakes of the United States, and its causes and remedies. The service was only 
expected to occupy the summer months of one or, at most, two years, requiring com- ~ 
paratively little trouble and responsibility, and an appropriation of $5,000 was made 
for the purpose the first year. The law expressly stipulated that no additional com- 
pensation was to be paid to the Commissioner for his work. 
In 1872 the subject of fish culture was added to the work to be done by the Com- 
mission, and an appropriation of $15,000 was made for continuing the inquiry into 
the food fishes and meeting the cost of the new division. 
