labor the existence of a whole generation of ichthyologists, breeders of fishes, and inventors of appliances of all sorts for use in connection with the taking, preservation, and increase of these animals. . . . Whether germane to the subject of scientific research or not, the most narrow specialist can hardly judge an allusion to the grandeur of the methods by which the food-supply of a nation was provided, hundreds of rivers stocked with fish, and the very depths of the ocean were repopulated. . . . In a few years we may fairly expect to see the food-supply of the entire civilized world materially increased, with all the benefits which that implies, and this result will in the main be owing to the unremunerated and devoted exertions of Spencer F. Baird."
As estimated by Mr. Dall, the proportion of the vertebrate fauna first made known by Baird to the total number recognized at the time as North American, varied from twenty-two per cent of the whole to forty per cent in different groups. His method of study of new material was as far removed as possible from bookishness. Prof. Baird's early life, Mr. Dall adds, "had included so much of exercise in the shape of long pedestrian journeys with gun and game-bag, so much familiarity with the wood-life of his favorite birds and mammals, that it would have been in any case impossible to class him with the closet-naturalist; while to this knowledge he added a genius for thorough, patient, and exhaustive research into all which concerned the subject of his study, and a wonderful inventiveness in labor-saving devices for labeling, museum-work, and registration. He had a wonderful capacity for work." These qualities, and others consonant with them, enabled him to draw conclusions which subsequent accumulations of material have verified in a surprising manner.
Prof. Baird was a man of great literary activity. The number of his works and contributions down to the end of 1882, recorded in Prof. G. Brown Goode's "Bibliography" is 1,063, of which, however, 775 are brief notices and critical reviews contributed to "The Annual Record of Science and Industry," 31 reports relating to the work of the Smithsonian Institution, 7 reports upon the American fisheries, 25 schedules and circulars officially issued, and 25 are volumes or papers edited; but many of these papers also contain important original matter. Of the remaining 200 papers, the majority are formal contributions to scientific literature. Some 20 or more of the papers were prepared conjointly with some other author—his brother, William M. Baird, Charles Girard, Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence, or Messrs. Brewer and Ridgway. Of all the papers, 73 relate to mammals, 80 to birds, 43 to reptiles, 431 to fishes, 61 to invertebrates, 16 to plants, 88 to geographical distribution, 46 to geology, mineralogy, and paleontology, 45 to anthropology, 31 to industry and art, and 109 to ex-
