The making of a naturalist: Spencer F. Baird, the early years

Abstract

In June 1853 Spencer F. Baird, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and his close friend, Jared P. Kirtland of Cleveland, Ohio went to Racine, Wisconsin, armed and equipped for collecting and preserving specimens of natural history. 1 In Racine their host was Philo R. Hoy, a local naturalist and friend of Kirtland's. Their collecting trip was a great success; nearly forty years later Hoy, in a letter to George Brown Goode, who had been Baird's chief assistant at the Smithsonian, provided an account of his first meeting with Baird. Hoy was surprised to see such a youthful looking person as Professor Baird was, in view of the high position he then occupied. During the trip Baird told Hoy and Kirtland about his years as a professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and of his many field trips with his students there. Kirtland asked if Baird had maintained contact with his students, and Baird replied that he was in correspondence with each of them, because