50 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
Dickinson College, as the one well fitted for the place. The ap¬ 
pointment was unanimously confirmed by the Board July 5, 1850, 
and Professor Baird being notified at once accepted and entered 
upon his new duties. He deposited in the Museum his own valu¬ 
able collections, comprising an extensive series of the skins of 
various mammals (European as well as American), a large number 
of bird skins (unmounted), representing about 500 American species 
and half as many European species, a rich variety of birds’ nests 
and birds’ eggs, more than 500 glass jars, tin vessels, and kegs con¬ 
taining alcoholic specimens of reptiles and fishes, and a number of 
vertebrate skeletons and of fossil remains. 
The new Assistant Secretary was truly in his element, and showed 
himself pre-eminently “the right man in the right place.” In 
Henry’s Fourth Annual Report (that for 1850), after recording the 
appointment of his Assistant, he adds : “ He entered on his duties 
in July last and, besides being actively engaged in organizing the 
department of natural history, he has rendered important service 
in conducting our foreign exchanges and attending to the business 
of the press.” 
The Smithsonian system of exchanges was instituted for the pur¬ 
pose of facilitating the reciprocal transmission between the Old World 
and the New of the memoirs of learned societies, and this system has 
become an essential agency in the interchange and diffusion of 
knowledge, and in the more rapid advancement of scientific dis¬ 
covery, by a wider and prompter co-operation. Previous to this 
inauguration such distant scientific information was so rarely and 
inconveniently accessible, largely through the delays and harass- 
ments of customs exactions, that important principles had not un- 
frequently been re-discovered abroad or at home, and sometimes with 
a considerable interval of time, to subsequently disturb and dispute 
a coveted and settled priority. 
By the urgent zeal of the Smithsonian Director, representing to 
foreign powers that only gratuitous distribution of the literary and 
scientific memoirs of societies or of individuals (not usually found 
on sale) was undertaken by the Institution, and that no commercial 
enterprise calculated in any way to interfere with the legitimate 
operations of trade was attempted—one port after another was 
opened to its packages, until, in the course of a few years, the an¬ 
nouncement was made that the Smithsonian exchanges were allowed 
