52 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
piedia,” of his editorship of the “Annual Record of Science and In¬ 
dustry” for eight years,—and of his other publications,—it is not 
proposed here to speak. This aspect of his intellectual life will be 
discussed by one in every respect far more competent to a just and 
discriminating presentation of the theme. The present remarks will 
be confined to a cursory review of Professor Baird’s varied admin¬ 
istrative work. 
For a number of years a notable decline in the productiveness of 
our extended fisheries had been with anxiety observed, the annual 
yield of this important element of our food supply having in many 
cases fallen off one-half of its amount a quarter of a century earlier. 
So serious a diminution and consequent enhancement of cost of sub¬ 
sistence was becoming a menacing problem. Were our leading 
food-fishes undergoing a process of slow but certain extinction? 
Several of the States (especially those of New England) appointed 
commissions of inquiry into the causes and remedies of the threaten¬ 
ing evil, but with little result. 
In the stern competitive struggle that from the dawn of terres¬ 
trial palseontogeny has been ordained by nature as the feudal tenure 
of all existence, and from which service man himself is not ex¬ 
empted, the feebleness of early youth in the individuals of every 
race would speedily terminate the biology of our planet were 
not provisions made for bridging over these cross lines of weakness 
to preserve the continuity of species. In the lower classes of being 
we find the crude expedient of a fertility so enormous as to allow 
of the wholesale destruction of the unprotected eggs or of their 
brood, and yet leave a remnant to spare for the chances of reaching 
adult age. In numerous other classes, a marvellous sagacity is dis¬ 
played by the mother in depositing her eggs where they will be least 
exposed to accident or voracious attack, and where the progeny (that 
she shall never see) will meet with their appropriate sustenance. 
In insects this peculiar instinct—so difficult of explanation as “ in¬ 
herited experience”—is perhaps most strikingly displayed. And 
lastly, when we ascend to the higher classes of birds and mammals,, 
we find the parental sentiment developed to an untiring vigilance 
for the protection ,and provident care for the nutrition, of the new , 
' generation until it is able to take up for itself the battle of life. 
As an illustration of the reckless prodigality of productiveness irt 
some of the lower families of the vertebrate branch it may be recalled 
that a single salmon will lay five thousand eggs; a trout, fifteen thou- 
