PREFACE xi 
collected with great care by Mr. Herbert A. Gill, long 
associated with the Fish Commission work under Pro- 
fessor Baird. 
In the preparation of the Biography the author has 
not attempted to enumerate or analyze Professor Baird’s 
publications, which are already made accessible by 
Goode’s exhaustive bibliography. Their relation to 
Science is indicated by the quotations cited from experts 
in Chapter XII, and the limit of space assigned to this 
volume forbade anything more extended. For the same 
reason reference to the pupils and subordinates by whose 
earnestness and ability much of Baird’s work was facili- 
tated has been necessarily restricted to a minimum. 
No one would have acknowledged their merits more 
generously than he. 
The intimate history of the negotiations by which he 
promoted the scientific activity of Government agencies 
is naturally not on record, though to some extent 
traditionally known. 
The chief aim of the biographer has been to show the 
man as he lived and worked; with glimpses of his relations 
to his contemporaries, to the promotion of science, and 
to great, and as yet hardly appreciated, public services. 
It is proper to say that from 1869 to the date of 
Professor Baird’s death, much of what is here recorded 
was known to the present biographer at the time of its 
occurrence. 
The biographer is under obligations to Judge Edward | 
W. Biddle of Carlisle, to the officers of the Smithsonian 
Institution, especially Dr. Richard Rathbun; to the 
Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Fisheries; 
and to the authorities of Dickinson College; to Miss Caro- 
line R. D. Baird, Miss Christine W. Biddle, Miss Harriet 
