Spencer Fullerton Baird, a biography. Including selections from his correspondence with Audubon, Agassiz, Dana, and others.

Philadelphia & London:: J.B. Lippincott, 1915., 1915. 8vo. xvi, 462 pp. Title printed in red & black. Plates, index. Original full dark blue black-ruled, gilt-stamped cloth, t.e.g. Embossed stamp of the Carnegie Institution, Mount Wilson Observatory. INSCRIBED BY GEORGE ELLERY HALE, June 1915. Very good. Scarce. Spencer Fullerton Baird was an American naturalist, ornithologist, ichthyologist, herpetologist, and museum curator. Baird was the first curator to be named at the Smithsonian Institution. He eventually served as assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1850 to 1878, and as Secretary from 1878 until 1887. Baird's bibliography included more than a thousand titles, about ninety of which were formal scientific contributions. When he arrived at the Smithsonian in the fall of 1850, Baird brought with him two railroad box cars full of his personal collections. The new curator immediately focused on developing a world-class museum and soon set forth a museum program to Secretary Henry. Acknowledging Henry's stated policy of gathering only materials not previously collected by others, Baird proposed concentrating on collections illustrating the natural history of North America. He created a system of exchange using duplicate specimens and proposed to furnish travelers with the means of "determining the character of objects collected in various part of North America," thus creating an expansive network of collectors. – Smithsonian. / Baird was also founder of the Woods Hole Laboratory and Fisheries Science, and, while confined to a wheelchair due to his progressive poor health, he died there at the age of 65. / William Healey Dall was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of North America, and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks.