SCIENCE -Supplement. 



FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, if 



ADDRESS OF MAJOR POWELL IN MEMORY OF 



PROFESSOR BAIRD.' 

 Baird was one of the learned men of the world, and, to a de- 

 gree perhaps unexampled in history, he was the discoverer of the 

 knowledge he possessed. He knew the birds of the air, from the 

 ptarmigan that lives among everlasting snows, to the humming- 

 bird that revels among ihe orchids of the tropics ; he knew the 

 beasts of the forests and the prairies, and the reptiles that crawl 

 through desert sands or slimy marshes ; he knew the fishes that 

 scale mountain-torrents, that bask in quiet lakes, or that journey 

 from zone to zone through the deep waters of the sea. In all this 

 realm of nature he had a minute and comprehensive knowledge 

 that no other man has ever acquired. What others have recorded 

 in this field of research he knew, and to their discoveries he made 

 a contribution of his own so bounteous, so stupendous, that he is 

 recognized as the master of systematic zoologists. 



All of Baird's scientific work is an illustration of modern induc- 

 tive or scientific reasoning. The inductions or general principles of 

 modern science are reached by the accumulation of vast stores of 

 facts. He knew how to accumulate facts ; how to reject the trivial 

 and select the significant. Modern science is almost buried under 

 the debris of observation, the record of facts without meaning, — 

 the sands of fact that are ground from the rock of truth by the at- 

 trition of mind ; but Baird could walk over the sands and see the 

 diamonds. Then he knew how to marshal significant facts into 

 systems, and to weld them into fundamental principles. In all his 

 works there can be discovered no taint of a priori reasoning or 

 syllogistic logic ; for in his mind there was no room for controversy, 

 and disputation fled before the light of his genius. Formal logic, 

 a disease of modern thought, — the contagion of Aristotlina, — 

 never ravaged his brain. With healthful directness, he sought the 

 truth guided by wise inference, and told the truth in its simplicity. 

 Baird was an organizer of the agencies of research. When a 

 bold explorer essayed to penetrate the seas of ice by the path of 

 peril and in quest of fame, he would ever so manage that a corps 

 of quiet scholars should be attached to the expedition to study the 

 climate of the Arctic zone, the geology of the Arctic rocks, the flora 

 of the Arctic lands, or the fauna of the Arctic fields ; and the best 

 knowledge we have of the igloo-dwellers, the Eskimo whose home 

 is on the ice of the north, has been brought to us by the quiet stu- 

 dents he succeeded in attaching to Arctic exploring expeditions ; 

 and so the love of glory was made to serve the cause of truth. 



When, in the interests of international commerce, expeditions 

 were sent to explore and survey routes of travel and transportation 

 across Central America from sea to sea, he managed to send with 

 them corps of scientific men whose function it was to bring from 

 the tropics all forms of its abundant life, vegetal and animal, and 

 the relics of the arts of the people of Central America as they are 

 exhibited in stone and clay and gold ; and the National Museum 

 has been enriched by the results of this labor, and the boundaries 

 of human knowledge extended thereby ; and so the greed of gain 

 was made to serve the love of truth. 



When our army was distributed on the frontiers of the land, he 

 everywhere enlisted our scholarly officers into the service of science, 

 and he transformed the military post into a station of research, an 

 Indian campaign into a scientific expedition. Scott, Marcy, Mc- 

 Clellan, Thomas, and many other of the great generals of America, 

 were in their younger days students of natural history, and collect- 

 ors for Baird. When our navy cruised around our shores, its 

 officers were inspired with that love of nature which made every 

 voyage of military duty a voyage of discovery in the realms of natural 



1 Delivered Jan. ii, before a joint meeting of the Philosophical, Biological, and 

 Anthropological Societies of Washington. 



science ; when they journeyed among the islands of the sea, they 

 brought back stores of scientific materials ; and when they sailed 

 through the littoral waters of other continents, they made voyages 

 of scientific investigation. Many of these earlier naturalists of the 

 navy in subsequent times became commodores and admirals. 



But time would fail me to tell of the exploring expeditions and 

 the railroad surveys throughout America, and the travels through- 

 out the world, which he utilized in the interest of science, or of 

 which he was the immediate projector. Of the abundant material 

 thus gathered from all parts of the world, some has gone to enrich 

 American institutions of learning, and some has been gathered into 

 the National Museum, — the result of Baird's organizing genius 

 and a splendid monument to his memory. 



The hills of the land stretch not so far as the billows of the sea ; 

 the heights of the mountains are not so great as the depths of the 

 ocean ; and so the world was unknown until this greater region was 

 explored. The treasures of the land did not satisfy the desires of 

 Baird, he must also have the treasures of the sea ; and so he organ- 

 ized a fish commission, with its great laboratories and vessels of 

 research. 



" What hidst thou in thy treasure-caves and cells, 

 Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main ? 

 Pale, glistening pearls and rainbow-colored shells. 

 Bright things which gleam unreck'd of, and in vain. 

 Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea ! 

 We ask not such from thee." 



What the scholar asked of the sea was all its forms of life, its 

 organisms minute and lowly, its crawling articulates, its pearl- 

 housed mollusks, its fishes that swim in armies, and its leviathans 

 that prowl among the waves, — the life of the reedy shore, the life 

 of the ocean-current, and the life of the deep sea. So, with many 

 ingenious appliaiTces, he and his lieutenants sailed away to explore 

 the ocean's mystery. So the Fish Commission was an agency of 

 research ; but it was more : he made it an agency by which science 

 is applied to the relief of the wants of mankind ; by which a cheap, 

 nutritious, healthful, and luxurious food is to be given to the millions 

 of men. He affirmed that for the production of food an acre of 

 water was more than equal to ten acres of land, thus giving to the 

 gloomy doctrine of Malthus its ultimate refutation, and clearing 

 away the veil of despair from the horizon of the poor ; for, when the 

 sea shall serve man with all the food that can be gathered from its 

 broad expanse, the land will not contain the millions whom it is thus 

 possible to supply. 



In the research thus organized the materials for the work of 

 other scientific men were gathered. When a great genius reads to 

 the world a chapter from the book of nature, the story is so beau- 

 tiful that many are stimulated to search in the same field for new 

 chapters of the same story. Thus it was that the publication of 

 Baird's great works on natural history developed in America a great 

 corps of naturalists, many of whom have become illustrious ; and 

 the stimulus of his work was felt throughout Europe. In the re- 

 search which he organized the materials were furnished for this 

 corps of naturalists ; but his agency in the development of this body 

 of workers was even more direct. He incited the men personally 

 to undertake and continuously prosecute their investigations. He 

 enlisted the men himself, he trained them himself, he himself fur- 

 nished them with the materials and instruments of research, and, 

 best of all, was their guide and great exemplar. Thus it was that 

 the three institutions over which he presided, the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, the National Museum, and the Fish Commission, were 

 woven into one great organization, — a university of instruction in 

 the methods of scientific research, including in its scope the entire 

 field of biology and anthropology. Such is Baird the investigator, 

 Baird the organizer, and Baird the instructor, in the length, breadth, 

 and thickness of his genius, the solidarity of a great man. 



All that I have said is a part of the public record ; it is found in 



