72 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
I 
ravaged his brain. With healthful directness, he sought the truth 
gujded by wise inference, and told the truth in its simplicity. 
Baird was an organizer of the agencies of research. When a 
bold explorer essayed to penetrate the seas of ice by the path of 
peril and in quest of fame, Baird would ever so manage that a corps 
of quiet scholars should be attached to the expedition to study the 
climate of the Arctic zone, the geology of the Arctic rocks, the flora 
of the Arctic lands, or the fauna of the Arctic fields ; and the best 
knowledge we have of the igloo-dwellers, the Eskimo whose home 
is on the ice of the North, has been brought to us by the quiet students 
he succeeded in attaching to Arctic exploring expeditions : and so 
the love of glory was made to serve the cause of truth. 
When, in the interests of international commerce, expeditions 
were sent to explore and survey routes of travel and transportation 
across Central America from sea to sea, he managed to send with 
them corps of scientific men whose function it was to bring from 
the tropics all forms of its abundant life, vegetal and animal, and 
the relics of the arts of the people of Central America as they are 
exhibited in stone and clay and gold ; and the National Museum 
has been enriched by the results of this labor, and the boundaries 
of human knowledge extended thereby: and so the greed of gain 
was made to serve the love of truth. 
When our army was distributed on the frontiers of the land, he 
everywhere enlisted our scholarly officers into the service of science 
and he transformed the military post into a station of research, an 
Indian campaign into a scientific expedition. Scott, Marcy, Mc¬ 
Clellan, Thomas, and many other of the great generals of America, 
were students of natural history and collectors for Baird. When 
our navy cruised around our shores, its officers were inspired with 
that love of nature which made every voyage of military duty a 
voyage of discovery in the realms of natural science; when they 
journeyed among the islands of the sea they brought back stores of 
scientific materials, and when they sailed through the littoral waters 
of other continents they made voyages of scientific investigation. 
Many of these earlier naturalists of the Navy in subsequent times 
became commodores and admirals. 
But time would fail me to tell of the exploring expeditions and 
the railroad surveys throughout America, and the travels through¬ 
out the world, which he utilized in the interest of science, or of 
which he was the immediate projector. Of the abundant material 
