GENERAL MEETINGS. 
63 
He had a wonderful capacity for work. He undertook and car¬ 
ried out successfully tasks which it would seem nobody else would 
have dared to attempt, or, attempting, would have been physically 
unable to complete. In the case of the immense volume on the 
mammals of the Pacific Railroad Surveys he says in the preface, 
July 20, 1857 j 
“ The examination of the material was actually commenced early 
in 1855 and many of the articles written in that year or 1856. 
With the continual accession of additional specimens it became 
finally necessary to rewrite, alter, or extend all that had been pre¬ 
pared prior to the present year (1857). It is to this that the fre¬ 
quent want of uniformity is due, the time allowed not being, suffi¬ 
cient in many cases to permit the reworking of the whole matter. 
* * * It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that the matter of the 
present report is entirely original throughout. ^ ^ ^ It is 
proper to state that, owing to various circumstances, the work was 
necessarily passed through the press with a rapidity probably un¬ 
exampled in the history of natural-history printing, allowing very 
little opportunity for that critical and leisurely examination so 
necessary in correcting a work of the kind. For most of the time 
the proof has been furnished and read at the rate of twenty-four to 
thirty-two pages per day, nearly 4D0 pages having been set up, 
read, and printed during the first half of July alone. Owing to 
the urgent necessity for the speedy completion of the volume, no 
time was allowed for the revision of the manuscript as a complete 
work, nor, indeed, of its separate portions, and, for much of the 
time, the preparation of much of the manuscript was only a few 
hours in advance of its delivery to the compositor.” 
The volume above referred to contains over 800 quarto pages 
and 42 plates. The manuscript was entirely prepared after six 
o’clock of working days which had been spent in the active admin¬ 
istrative and executive work of the Assistant Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution, then unassisted by stenographer or other 
clerical supplement. Fortunately for science Baird did not always 
have to work under such circumstances, but the incident shows 
what he was capable of doing when the occasion seemed to him to 
warrant it. Probably no other work of equal importance, on any 
subject, was ever carried out under such pressure. 
Mammals .—Professor Baird’s contributions to a knowledge of 
North American Mammals, though less voluminous than those re¬ 
lating to birds, are not less important. Previous to this time but 
