36 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
Another feature of the surroundings at Carlisle, 
which doubtless was of prime importance, was the fact 
that the meadows, marshes, streams and ponds, the 
wooded hills and limestone bluffs, of the region within 
twenty miles of the town, afforded attractions to myriads 
of birds, including, at the migratory seasons, waterfowl 
of many kinds, besides the quail, grouse and other game 
peculiar to field and forest. 
It is positively astonishing to him who is familiar 
only with the depleted fauna of to-day, to read over the 
almost daily record of birds shot or seen by Baird, 
which occur in his early diaries. When other members 
of the family, such as his uncles, went out, it seems that 
a good bag of quail, snipe, woodcock, or waterfowl, was 
obtained as a matter of course. 
The streams and lakes seem also to have yielded a 
bountiful supply of turtles, salamanders and fishes, while 
snakes, chiefly harmless, were not of rare occurrence. 
Moreover, the limestone of the region in many places 
was replete with fossils, often in an excellent state of 
preservation. On the whole, for anyone with the taste 
for natural history, the Cumberland Valley about Carlisle 
seems to have been almost ideally supplied with material 
for study.* 
3 The following description, taken from Baird’s own publication in 
the Literary Record of the Linnean Association of Pennsylvania Col- 
lege, 1845, No. 4, p. 17, will give the reader a clear idea of the region: 
“Briefly to characterize Cumberland county, it consists of a 
section of the great Cumberland valley, twelve miles wide, and about 
forty long, bounded on the north by the Kittatinny or North Moun- 
tain; on the south, by the South Mountain, and on the east by the 
Susquehanna river. The South Mountain is composed of the various 
primary rocks, mica slate, chlorite, quartz and sandstone, the white 
fucoidal sandstone of Prof. Rogers forming its northern ridges. 
