Spencer Fullerton Baird

PROFESSOR SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Spencer Fullerton Baird HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1784

December 27: Elihu Spencer died (Spencer Fullerton Baird would be a great-grandson). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1823

February 3, Monday: Spencer Fullerton Baird was born.

Gioachino Rossini’s melodramma tragico Semiramide to words of Rossi after Voltaire was performed for the initial time, in Teatro La Fenice, Venice, with a very enthusiastic response (this was the last opera Rossini would write for Italy).

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Spencer Fullerton Baird “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1829

June 27, Saturday: James Smithson, who had been born in Paris in 1765, died of natural causes in Genoa. When Smithson had made his will, he had been miffed at the snottiness of British nobles to whom he was related by blood: “My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten.”1 A minor stipulation in the will, in which he tried to leave everything to friendlier relatives, was that should his beneficiary die without issue, he wanted the estate to be used to create a “Smithsonian Institution” dedicated to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,” and stipulating also that this institution should be set up in the USA, a country toward which he had never displayed the slightest interest. Presumably the man wasn’t wanting to think of his estate as ever falling into the hands of British snots, French snots, or Italian snots, and supposing that over here in the New World people had become different.2

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1. BTW, who the hell are the Northumberlands and the Percys? 2. The Smithsonian Institution, in its current self-promotion, refers to its founding contributor only as “a British experimental scientist.” One wonders what experiments Smithson performed other than an early version of the very simple experiment which was performed by some yippies who one day in the frenetic 1960s went to the visitor’s gallery of the New York Stock Exchange and proceeded to throw dollar bills down onto the heads of the market representatives below. Refer to the 1993 Smithsonian publication, THE CASTLE: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE SMITHSONIAN BUILDING, by Cynthia R. Field, Richard E. Stamm, and Heather P. Ewing of the Office of Architectural History and Historic Preservation, page 1. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1835

December 17, Thursday: President Andrew Jackson inaugurated a decade of angry tugging in the federal Senate over what to do about the James Smithson bequest which would eventually become the “Smithsonian Institution.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 17th of 12th M 1835 / Attended Meeting which was silent but a pretty good one RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Spencer Fullerton Baird HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1836

July 1, Friday: Henry James Hungerford, having died without children, the US Congress finally saw its way clear to accept the money Hungerford’s uncle James Smithson, who had died on June 27, 1829, had left in his will, over the protests of various types that the congress lacked the authority to do so and that it would be beneath our dignity to do so. –Money will be money, and the feeding trough known as the “Smithsonian Institution” was on its way.

Water was let into the first stretch of the Erie and Wabash Canal.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert began to enter the latitude of Cape Horn.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Friday, July 1st. We were now nearly up to the latitude of Cape Horn, and having over forty degrees of easting to make, we squared away the yards before a strong westerly gale, shook a reef out of the fore-topsail, and stood on our way, east-by- south, with the prospect of being up with the Cape in a week or ten days. As for myself, I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours; and the want of rest, together with constant wet and cold, had increased the swelling, so that my face was nearly as large as two, and I found it impossible to get my mouth open wide enough to eat. In this state, the steward applied to the captain for some rice to boil for me, but he only got only got a– “No! d--- you! Tell him to eat salt junk and hard bread, like the rest of them.” For this, of course, I was much obliged to him, and in truth it was just what I expected. However, I did not starve, for the mate, who was a man as well as a sailor, and had always been a good friend to me, smuggled a pan of rice into the galley, and told the cook to boil it for me, and not let the “old man” see it. Had it been fine weather, or in port, I should have gone below and lain by until my face got well; but in such weather as this, and short-handed as we were, it was not for me to desert my post; so I kept on deck, and stood my watch and did my duty as well as I could.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Spencer Fullerton Baird “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: Spencer Fullerton Baird entered Dickinson College. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

May 9, Wednesday: A lawyer representing the government of the United States of America obtained an order from the British Court of Chancery, for the debentures bequeathed by James Smithson for the creation of a “Smithsonian Institution” dedicated to “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” This lawyer would convert all the debentures into gold sovereigns and pack these sovereigns into ten, maybe more, cases weighing a thousand pounds each, evidently to carry this half-million in gold back across the Atlantic with his baggage in the hold of the passenger ship! When the US treasury would get it hands on these sovereigns, it would of course before anything else have to melt them down and cast them into proper money, coin of the realm, that is, US coins.3 Whereupon they would give these bright coins to various states in exchange for bond issues, and many of these paper promises would promptly go into default and lose a good portion of their value. And meanwhile persons such as Joel R. Poinsett of the private National Institute for the Promotion of Science would be full of good ideas about how to spend all that money, or what of it was left.

3. Would this be a precedent for the money laundering that would go on during the Nixon years, with the administration moving stacks of hundred-dollar bills into Mexico and swapping the currency there, so that when brought back to the “Plumbers” safe in the White House for disbursement to operatives, no serial numbers would be traceable? Or would it have been simpleminded chauvinism? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1840

June 4, Thursday: While awaiting instructions of the king, the Governor of Genoa prohibited the entry of the mortal remains of Nicolò Paganini.

At the age of 17, Spencer Fullerton Baird wrote from Carlisle, Pennsylvania to John James Audubon, FRS at 86 White Street in New-York, providing a meticulous description of specimens of Tyrannula fly catcher he had shot in low swampy thickets.

Dear Sir, I herewith send you the description of a species of Tyrannula an account of which I have been able to find, neither in your Ornithological Biography and Synopsis, nor in Nuttall’s Ornithology. I have obtained three specimens, all in low, swampy thickets. Two of them I have stuffed, the third (obtained last Saturday) I have in spirits and would gladly send it to you, had I the opportunity. Their habits were very similar to those of the Little Tyrant Flycatcher. (Musicapa Pusilla). Male. ... You see, Sir, that I have taken (after much hesitation) the liberty of writing to you. I am but a boy [he was seventeen], and very inexperienced, as you no doubt will observe from my description of the Flycatcher. My brother last year commenced a study of our Birds, and after some months I joined him. He has gone elsewhere to settle and I am left alone.... I have already trespassed too much on your patience, and will conclude by saying, that if I can be of the slightest assistance to you in any way, be assured that although others may tender it more ably, yet none can more cheerfully.

I am, Sir, etc.

The 1st steam packet service between Boston and Liverpool. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BOSTON AND BUNKER HILL, FROM THE EAST

BOSTON, FROM THE DORCHESTER HEIGHTS

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Spencer Fullerton Baird HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sometime in June: John James Audubon responded to Spencer Fullerton Baird:

On my return from Charleston, S.C. yesterday, I found your kind favor of the 4th inst. in which you have the goodness to inform me that you have discovered a new species of flycatcher, and which, if the bird corresponds to your description, is, indeed, likely to prove itself hitherto undescribed, although you speak of yourself as being a youth, your style and the descriptions you have sent me prove to me that an old head may from time to time be found on young shoulders.

August: Spencer Fullerton Baird graduated from Dickinson College.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Spencer Fullerton Baird HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1841

A DESCRIPTION OF SIXTEEN NEW SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS DESCRIBED IN THE ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK LYCEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. BY JACOB P. G IRAUD, JR. COLLECTED IN TEXAS, 1838 (New York. George F. Nesbitt, printer, Tontine Building, corner of Wall and Water Streets).4 This collection of taxidermy specimens has been explained as follows: •1. Icterus Audubonii, Giraud (no plate), is Psarocolius melanocephalus, Wagl. Isis, 1829, p. 750. A good figure and interesting account of this fine species is given by Mr. Cassin in his new work on the birds of California, Texas, Oregon, &c. pt. 5. p. 137. pi. xxi. •2. Muscicapa Texensis, Giraud, pi. 1. This seems very like Elcenia cayennensis (Linn.), (which is included by Mr. Swainson in his Synopsis of the Birds of Mexico,) though rather larger in size. •3. Muscicapa Lawrenceii, Giraud, pi. 2. fig. 1. •4. Muscicapa Fulvifrons, Giraud, pi. 2. fig. 2. •5. Sylvia Halseii, Giraud, pi. 3. fig. 1. This and the two preceding species I do not recognise. •6. Muscicapa Derhamii, Giraud, pi. 3. fig. 2, is Muscicapa vulnerata, Wagl. Isis, 1831, p. 520; Setophaga vulnerata, Bp. Consp. p. 313. •7. Muscicapa Belli, Giraud, pi. 4. fig. I. This bird I believe to be Sylvia chrysophrys, Licht. in Mus. Berol.; Myiodioctes chrysophrys, Licht. Nomencl. p. 32; Basileuterus chrysophrys, Bp. Consp. p. 314. But Mr. Giraud’s name has many years’ precedence, and it will therefore stand as Basileuterus Belli (Giraud). •8. Partjs Leucotis, Giraud, pi. 4. fig. 2, is without doubt Setophaga rubra, Sw. Phil. Mag. 1827, p. 368, and has other prior synonyms. •9. Fringilla Texensis, Giraud, pi. 5. fig. 1, is Chrysomitris mexicana (Sw.); Carduelis mexicana, Sw. Phil. Mag. 1827, p. 435. • 10. Pipra Galericulata, Giraud, pi. 5. fig. 2 = Euphonia elegantissima (Bp.); Pipra elegantissima, Bp. Pr. Z. S. 1837, p. 112, and has other synonyms. • 11. Muscicapa Leucomus, Giraud, pi. 6. fig. 1, is Setophaga picta, Sw. Zool. 111. n. s. pi. 3. • 12. Muscicapa Brasieri, Giraud, pi. 6. fig. 2, seems to be the same as Basileuterus culicivorus, Bp. Consp. p. 313; Sylvia culicivora, Licht. in Mus. Berol., which in that case must be called Basileuterus Brasieri (Giraud). • 13. Muscicapa Rubrifrons, Giraud, pi. 7. fig. 1. This very pretty bird is named in Bonaparte’s Consp. p. 312, Cardellina amicta, Dubus; and a reference is given to that author’s “Esquisses Ornjthologiques,” 1850, t. 25, which, unless I am much mistaken, is still unpublished. Be that as it may, Mr. Giraud’s name has many years’ priority, and the bird will stand as Cardellina rubrifrons (Giraud). • 14. Sylvia Olivacea, Giraud, pi. 7. fig. 2, is Sylvia tceniata, Dubus, Bull. Ac. Brux. xiv. part 2. p. 104; Rev. Zool. 1848, p. 245. Mr. Giraud’s name has the priority. • 15. Certhia Albifrons, Giraud, pi. 8, is Salpinctes mexicanus, Bp. Consp. p. 224; Thryothorus mexicanus, Sw. Zool. 111. n. s. pi. 11.

4. This was a folio of eighteen leaves and eight plates, neither paged nor numbered. Of the sixteen species described only fourteen were figured. The plates had been drawn by “A. Halsey Esqur.” and the lithography was by N. Carrier of 2 Spruce Street. Rather than being, as stated, collected in Texas, we now infer that they must have been collected in Mexico. Although it is alleged that these specimens had been “described in the annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History,” we doubt that there ever was any such description. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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• 16. Alauda Minor, Giraud (no plate), is an Otocorys, probably the same as Wagler’s Alauda chrysoleema, Isis, 1831, p. 530; Otocorys chrysoleema, Bp. Consp. p. 246. But there is much confusion at present among the American, as among the Old-World species of this genus.

The collection has been otherwise described as: • Harris’s Woodpecker. Picus Harrisii Audubon. • Red Shafted Woodpecker. Colaptes Mexicanus Swainson, Picus Mexicanus Audubon. • Black Headed Grosbeak. Coccoborus Melanocephalus Swainson, Fringilla Melanocephalus Audubon. • Evening Grosbeak. Coccothraustes Vespertina Swainson and Richardson, Fringilla Vespertina, Cooper, Bonaparte, Audubon. • Crimson Fronted Finch. Pyrrhula Frontalis Bonaparte and Nuttall, Fringilla Frontalis Audubon. • Western Blue Bird. Sialica occidentalis Townsend, Audubon. • Say’s Fly Catcher. Tyrannula Saya Swainson and Richardson, Muscicapa Saya Bonaparte, Nuttall, Audubon. • Rocky Mountain Fly Catcher. Tyrannula Nigricans Swainson, Muscicapa Nigricans Audubon. • Audubon’s Wood Warbler. Sylvia Audubonii Townsend and Audubon. • Yellow Headed Troopial. Angelalus Xanthocephalus Swainson and Richardson, Icterius Xanthocephalus Bonaparte, Nuttall and Audubon. • Arctic Blue Bird. Sialia Attica Swainson, Nuttall, Audubon. • Violet Green Swallow. Hirurdo Thalassinus Swainson, Hirurdo Thalassina Audubon. • Townsends Wood Warbler. Sylvicola Townsendii Nuttall, Sylvia Townsendii Audubon. • Hermit Wood Warbler. Sylvicola Occidentalis Townsend, Sylvia Occidentalis Audubon. • Arkansas Fly Catcher. Tyrannus Verticalis Say, Muscicapa Verticalis Audubon, Bonaparte, Nuttall. • Brown Song Finch. Fringilla Crinerea Gmel and Audubon. • Oregon Snow Bird. Fringilla Oregona Townsend and Audubon.

Recent college graduate Spencer Fullerton Baird visited New-York and encountered the author at the shop of the taxidermist John G. Bell. Giraud invited this 18-year-old to view his collection and Baird of course pronounced this to be the finest collection of American birds he had ever seen. A good time was had by all. Giraud gave Baird a number of specimens of shore birds and others he did not have, promising there would be more the following season. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1846

Spencer Fullerton Baird’s 12-page pamphlet on the field collection and preparation of biological specimens, HINTS FOR PRESERVING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY (Carlisle PA: Gitt and Hinkley).5

Augustus Addison Gould became a corresponding member of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. Publication of his EXPEDITION SHELLS; DESCRIBED FOR THE WORK OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, COMMANDED BY CAPT. WILKES, U. S. N., DURING THE YEARS 1838-’42 (Boston). Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, ii, 141-145, 148-152,153-156, 159-162,165-167, 170-173, 175- 176,177-179, 180-181,182-184, 185-187,190-192, 196-198,200-203, 204-206, 208-209, 210-212, 214-215, 218-221, 222-225, 237-239. 251-252; iii, 73-75, 83-85, 89-92, 106-108, 118-121, 140-144, 151-150, 169-172, 214-218, 252-256, 275-278, 292-296, 309-312, 343-348. OTIA CONCHOLOGICA, pp. 1-100, 1862. THE SCIENCE OF 1846

5. Henry Thoreau would have in his possession a later version of this reduced to ten pages on blue paper, DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING COLLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE PARTIES ENGAGED IN THE EXPLORATION OF A ROUTE FOR THE PACIFIC RAILROAD ALONG THE 49TH PARALLEL. Would he have been using it as a guide, in his preparation of specimens for Louis Agassiz? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 6, Monday: Spencer Fullerton Baird became full professor of natural history at Dickinson College, at an annual salary of $400.00 per year,6 despite the fact that Dickinson was a Methodist college and this professor was Unitarian. (But Baird had already been teaching there for some time, for free, paying his dues.) In fact Baird would be Moncure Daniel Conway’s professor of zoology there, and here is what Conway would have to say about him, much later in life:

Baird, the youngest of the Faculty, was the beloved professor and the ideal student. He was beautiful and also manly; all that was finest in the forms he explained to us seemed to be represented in the man. He possessed the art of getting knowledge into the dullest pupil. So fine was his spirit that his explanations of all the organs and functions of the various species were an instruction also in refinement of mind. Nothing unclean could approach him. One main charm of spring’s approach was that then would begin our weekly rambles in field, meadow, wood, where Baird introduced us to his intimates. About some of these – especially snakes– most of us had indiscriminate superstitions. Occasionally he would capture some pretty and harmless snakes, and show us with pencillings their difference from the poisonous ones. He even persuaded the bolder among us to handle them. He kept a small barrel of these pretty reptiles in his house, and his little daughter used to play with them, till once some lady entering the room gave a scream. After that, so ran the story, the child had the usual horror of snakes. After Professor Baird went to reside in Washington I had opportunities of seeing him and his family often. Mrs. Baird was a lady of fine culture and much wit. Baird was very lovable in his home, and to the end of life he remained a man in whom I never discovered a fault of mind or heart. He awakened in me a love of science, to which I had previously given little thought.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

6. To get a sense of what that amounted to in today’s money, consult HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 10, Monday: In the US Congress, the decade of petty bickering was over and funding arrangements were finalized for the Smithsonian Institution.

“For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave trade, including the support of recaptured Africans, and their removal to their country.” This appropriation of $25,000 (STATUTES AT LARGE, IX. 96) would be the last until 1856. “Nearly all of these meagre appropriations went toward reimbursing Southern plantation owners for the care and support of illegally imported Africans, and the rest to the maintenance of the African agency. Suspiciously large sums were paid for the first purpose, considering the fact that such Africans were always worked hard by those to whom they were farmed out, and often ‘disappeared’ while in their hands.” In other words, this appears to have been more of a boondoggle, an avenue for the sharing around of tax dollars among citizens of influence, than an active suppression of the international slave trade. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: With the North as yet unawakened to the great changes taking place in the South, and with the attitude of the South thus in process of development, little or no constructive legislation could be expected on the subject of the slave-trade. As the divergence in sentiment became more and more pronounced, there were various attempts at legislation, all of which proved abortive. The pro-slavery party attempted, as early as 1826, and again in 1828, to abolish the African agency and leave the Africans practically at the mercy of the States;7 one or two attempts were made to relax the few provisions which restrained the coastwise trade;8 and, after the treaty of 1842, Benton proposed to stop appropriations for the African squadron until England defined her position on the Right of Search question.9 The anti-slavery men presented several bills to amend and strengthen previous laws;10 they sought, for instance, in vain to regulate the Texan trade, through which numbers of slaves indirectly reached the United States.11 Presidents and consuls earnestly recommended legislation to restrict the clearances of vessels bound on slave-trading voyages, and to hinder the facility with which slavers obtained fraudulent papers.12 Only one such bill succeeded in passing the Senate, and that was dropped in the House.13 The only legislation of this period was confined to a few appropriation bills. Only one of these acts, that of 1823, appropriating $50,000,14 was designed materially to aid in the 7. In 1826 Forsyth of Georgia attempted to have a bill passed abolishing the African agency, and providing that the Africans imported be disposed of in some way that would entail no expense on the public treasury: HOME JOURNAL, 19th Congress, 1st session, page 258. In 1828 a bill was reported to the House to abolish the agency and make the Colonization Society the agents, if they would agree to the terms. The bill was so amended as merely to appropriate money for suppressing the slave-trade: HOME JOURNAL, 20th Congress, 1st session, House Bill No. 190. 8. HOME JOURNAL, 20th Congress, 1st session, House Bill No. 190, pages 121, 135; 20th Congress, 2d session, pages 58-9, 84, 215. 9. Congressional Globe, 27th Congress, 3d session, pages 328, 331-6. 10. Cf. Mercer’s bill, HOUSE JOURNAL, 21st Congress, 1st session, page 512; also Strange’s two bills, SENATE JOURNAL, 25th Congress, 3d session, pages 200, 313; 26th Congress, 1st session, Senate Bill No. 123. 11. SENATE JOURNAL, 25th Congress, 2d session, pages 297-8, 300. 12. SENATE DOCUMENTS, 28th Congress, 1st session IV. No. 217, page 19; SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 31st Congress, 2d session, II. No. 6, pages 3, 10, etc.; 33d Congress, 1st session VIII. No. 47, pages 5-6; 34th Congress, 1st session, XV. No. 99, page 80; HOUSE JOURNAL, 26th Congress, 1st session, pages 117-8; cf. HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress, 1st session, page 650, etc.; 21st Congress, 2d session, page 194; 27th Congress, 1st session, pages 31, 184; HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 29th Congress, 1st session, III. No. 43, page 11; HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 31st Congress, 1st session, III. pt. 1, No. 5, pages 7-8. 13. SENATE JOURNAL, 26th Congress, 1st session, Senate Bill No. 335; HOUSE JOURNAL, 26th Congress, 1st session, pages 1138, 1228, 1257. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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suppression of the trade, all the others relating to expenses incurred after violations. After 1823 the appropriations dwindled, being made at intervals of one, two, and three years, down to 1834, when the amount was $5,000. No further appropriations were made until 1842, when a few thousands above an unexpended surplus were appropriated. In 1843 $5,000 were given, and finally, in 1846, $25,000 were secured; but this was the last sum obtainable until 1856.15 Nearly all of these meagre appropriations went toward reimbursing Southern plantation owners for the care and support of illegally imported Africans, and the rest to the maintenance of the African agency. Suspiciously large sums were paid for the first purpose, considering the fact that such Africans were always worked hard by those to whom they were farmed out, and often “disappeared” while in their hands. In the accounts we nevertheless find many items like that of $20,286.98 for the maintenance of Negroes imported on the “Ramirez;”16 in 1827, $5,442.22 for the “bounty, subsistence, clothing, medicine,” etc., of fifteen Africans;17 in 1835, $3,613 for the support of thirty-eight slaves for two months (including a bill of $1,038 for medical attendance).18 The African agency suffered many vicissitudes. The first agent, Bacon, who set out early in 1820, was authorized by President Monroe “to form an establishment on the island of Sherbro, or elsewhere on the coast of Africa,” and to build barracks for three hundred persons. He was, however, warned “not to connect your agency with the views or plans of the Colonization Society, with which, under the law, the Government of the United States has no concern.” Bacon soon died, and was followed during the next four years by Winn and Ayres; they succeeded in establishing a government agency on Cape Mesurado, in conjunction with that of the Colonization Society. The agent of that Society, Jehudi Ashmun, became after 1822, the virtual head of the colony; he fortified and enlarged it, and laid the foundations of an independent community. The succeeding government agents came to be merely official representatives of the United States, and the distribution of free rations for liberated Africans ceased in 1827. Between 1819 and 1830 two hundred and fifty-two recaptured Africans were sent to the agency, and $264,710 were expended. The property of the government at the agency was valued at $18,895. From 1830 to 1840, nearly $20,000 more were expended, chiefly for the agents’ salaries. About 1840 the appointment of an agent ceased, and the colony became gradually self-supporting and independent. It was proclaimed as the Republic of Liberia in 1847.19

14. STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 764. 15. Cf. above, Chapter VIII. page 125. 16. Cf. REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, 1827. 17. Cf. REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, 1827. 18. HOUSE REPORTS, 24th Congress, 1st session, I. No. 223. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1847

April: Louis Agassiz recruited Spencer Fullerton Baird:

I prefer to have a great number of specimens of the most common species in all their ages, then to have few specimens of many rare species. I will mention as an example, that I should collect as many as twenty and more specimens of all your salamander, frogs, toads, and have besides the tadpoles in all their different states, the whole preserved in spirit.

He also sought reptiles, fish, “bats, mice, rats, moles, shrews, weasels, squirrels, etc.” It was Baird, along with Agassiz’s assistant and secretary James Elliot Cabot, who organized Agassiz’s collecting network, and it was Cabot who recruited Henry Thoreau in Concord as a collector: in a letter of May 3, 1847 Cabot thanked

19. This account is taken exclusively from government documents: AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, NAVAL, III. Nos. 339, 340, 357, 429 E; IV. Nos. 457 R (1 and 2), 486 H, I, page 161 and 519 R, 564 P, 585 P; HOUSE REPORTS, 19th Congress, 1st session, I. No. 65; HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 19th Congress, 2d session, IV. No. 69; 21st Congress, 2d session, I. No. 2, pages 42-3, 211-8; 22d Congress 1st session, I. No. 2, pages 45, 272-4; 22d Congress, 2d session, I. No. 2, pages 48, 229; 23d Congress, 1st session, I. No. 1, pages 238, 269; 23d Congress, 2d session, I. No. 2, pages 315, 363; 24th Congress 1st session, I. No. 2, pages 336, 378; 24th Congress, 2d session, I. No. 2, pages 450, 506; 25th Congress, 2d session, I. No. 3, pages 771, 850; 26th Congress, 1st session, I. No. 2, pages 534, 612; 26th Congress, 2d session, I. No. 2, pages 405, 450. It is probable that the agent became eventually the United States consul and minister; I cannot however cite evidence for this supposition. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

Thoreau for several shipments of specimens, including breams, pout, painted tortoises and snapping turtles,

Colored wood engraving of a bream lying on a sandy bank, engraved by A.F. Lydon and printed by B. Fawcett, in William Houghton’s “British Fresh-water Fishes,” 1879

with which he stated that Mr. Agassiz was “highly delighted” — although he was forced also to convey a message that the Professor, such a very important personage, regretfully had to decline Thoreau’s invitation to a mere low-rent “spearing excursion” involving no other famous men. On May 8, Thoreau would offer to take “toll” for his contribution “in the shape of some, it may be, impertinent and unscientific inquiries.” He followed with an inventory of Concord River fish, and offered to obtain further specimens:

there are also minks, muskrats, frogs, lizards, tortoise, snakes, caddice-worms, leeches, muscles [sic], etc., or rather, here they are (179-80; emphasis in original).

In Cabot’s reply of May 27 there is mention of a live fox contributed by Thoreau which was apparently “doing well” and making a contribution to scientific understanding in a cage in Professor Agassiz’s back yard in Cambridge. Among Thoreau’s fish were a possibly new species of bream, a possibly new species of dace, and two possibly new species of minnows. Cabot’s letter apparently responded to one from Thoreau of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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same date:

I send you 15 pouts, 17 perch, 13 shiners, 1 larger land tortoise, and 5 muddy tortoises, all from the pond by my house. Also 7 perch, 5 shiners, 8 breams, 4 dace? 2 muddy tortoises, 5 painted do., and 3 land do., all from the river. One black snake, alive, and one dormouse? caught last night in my cellar.

Thoreau would go on to take some of his “toll” in questions:

What are the scientific names of those minnows which have any? Are the four dace I sent to-day identical with one of the former, and what are they called? Is there such a fish as the black sucker described,— distinct from the common?

The exchanges, and apparently the contribution of specimens, ended at that point, except for a letter Thoreau would post nearly a year later inquiring whether Cabot’s journal might pay for an article, and except for one final communication, from the Professor himself, once again declining an invite from Thoreau — this time Thoreau had attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the great scientist to deliver a series of public lectures at the Lyceum in Bangor, Maine.

This was the collecting which Thoreau would describe in WALDEN, in speaking of an unnamed “distinguished naturalist”:

WALDEN: The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, PEOPLE OF which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a WALDEN wild native kind (Mus leucopus) not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.

LOUIS AGASSIZ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this collecting that Thoreau did for Agassiz, on his page 146, by deploying the phrase: ...snapping turtles sent by an admiring Henry David Thoreau... We may note that, first, Edward Lurie has radically simplified the service that Thoreau was providing in Concord to the biological research staff in Cambridge, the snapping turtles referenced by Lurie being only one small part of it but being made to stand for the whole without any ellipsis. We may note that, second, Lurie employs an ambiguous modifier “admiring” which might mean that Thoreau was admiring the research which was going on, or which might mean that Thoreau admired Professor Agassiz’s scientific projects and plans, or which might mean that Thoreau admired Professor Agassiz himself, his energy or his capacity or his spirit or his intellect or his persona or his ethics or his racism or his catastrophism (or whatever). Where in the documentation that we have available to us would this word “admiring” have come from? Lurie provides no reference for this. Why would such a modifier have been inserted here? Well, folks, I am not just asking rhetorical questions, I do have a suggestion as to what the answer is. But there is no way that I can make this suggestion and be polite, not at one and the same time. My suggestion is that what we have here is an example of the two cultures of Science and the Humanities, with this bombastic bully Agassiz, the scientist with the political and social agenda and the life-style and the persona which was to be legitimated by his pretend science, being used to stand in for the “The Sciences” part of the dichotomy, and our Thoreau being used to stand in for the “The Humanities” part of the dichotomy. Thoreau as appreciative lay audience for the Scientist! Thoreau as trophy: see here’s this recognized sensitive poet mystic writer among our public scalps. My argument would be based on the assertion that nowhere is there to be found the slightest justification for an inference that Thoreau respected Agassiz as a person, or was anything but troubled by his scientistic hijinks — that such an inference is the sheerest presumption. One may send scientific specimens to a center for scientific investigation and receive pay for that service not out of any admiration but merely out of trust that eventually, somehow, a recognizably bad situation will begin to improve. Or, for the ready cash. That the situation at this center for scientific investigation was bad, Lurie goes to great trouble to document. Basically, Agassiz was locked in “gimme” mode and seldom made very much use of anything he had already been given, but Lurie assigns Thoreau no credit for having been able to see this at the time. This is, incidentally, the only mention of the naturalist Thoreau in the entire 400-page biography of this institutionalist (although the nonscientist Waldo Emerson is mentioned, sometimes at length, on 15 of its pages). One wonders why that would be. I would offer that Lurie is relying on the 19th-Century appreciation of the relative cultural significance of the Sage of Concord, whose admiration could be made to indicate a great deal to the readers of this biography, and the relative cultural insignificance of his low-rent clone Hank the local lad, whose attributed admiration would be worth no more than a mention.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Spencer Fullerton Baird “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1849

Spencer Fullerton Baird, who would later head the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, was Moncure Daniel Conway’s professor of zoology at Dickinson College. Despite the fact that Dickinson was a Methodist college, this professor was a Unitarian. Here is what Conway had to say about Baird, much later in life:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

The Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock’s HISTORY OF A ZOOLOGICAL TEMPERANCE CONVENTION, HELD IN CENTRAL AFRICA IN 1847 (Northampton).

E. Du Bois-Reymond invented a galvanometer that could measure the electric impulses in nerves. H. von Helmholtz measured the speed of nervous impulses in frogs.

The mechanization of agriculture began. Mechanical reapers, and later the internal combustion engine (and consequently the tractor) altered the face of the world — and the growth and increasing urbanization of the world population. Between 1860 and 1920, about 1,000,000,000 acres of new land were brought under cultivation, with another 1,000,000,000 acres coming into production during the following six decades. Improvements in shipping, refrigeration, and processing further industrialized this process. Today’s American farmer receives 4% of the price of chicken in the store and 12% of the price of a can of corn.

During this decade Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution, exploiting the popularity of the writings of Humboldt in an utterly typical and enviably wrongheaded manner, would be espousing a novel and dangerous notion: in this best of all possible worlds, rain follows the plow. All we need to do, therefore, in this best of all possible worlds, to transform the arid high grasslands of the center of the North American continent into an edenic paradise, is determinedly to turn that arid sod and till that arid soil. As in baseball’s field of dreams, if you build it they will come! “They,” in this case, would turn out to be the vast black clouds of dust and despair of the 1930s: the Dustbowl. Ecology will not be mocked. By this point fully half of the native-born Vermonters had abandoned its rocky soil for points west. Sometimes entire towns moved as groups. Herman Melville would comment after a tour during the 1850s, that “Some of these mountain townships … look like countries depopulated by plague and war. Every mile or two a house is passed untenanted.” Horace Greeley would embrace this wish-fulfilment fantasy: “Go West, Young Man!” The rolling plains of Illinois would turn out to possess singular advantages not only in terms of a more fertile soil but also in terms of a scale more appropriate to the emergence of labor-saving farm machinery. The dry plateaus of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and the Texas panhandle would prove to be another, no less rocky, disappointment. And when they did turn the land into an ecological disaster, where would be Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian to say that “he was sure sorry”; where would be the federal government to make up for its poor imperial advice by the rendering of assistance to the distressed? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spencer Fullerton Baird became junior assistant secretary at the Smithsonian Institution. The next fifteen years would be made difficult not only for him but for the others there, because of the character of the first secretary of that institution, Joseph Henry. It was perfectly legitimate, Henry felt, since he was the boss and since the reputation of that establishment was upon his shoulders, that he should be able at any time to riffle through the desks, opening and reading any and all correspondence. Woe would be the lot of any person there who had a locked desk, if the first secretary found that the key he had been given was not a working key! When Baird arrived at the new Smithsonian Castle, there were still slave pens behind the structure. On the bright side, Congress had just agreed to the Compromise of 1850 — so these pens were not as jam packed full of human chattel as they had been in previous years. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institution called Charles Frédéric Girard from Cambridge to Washington DC, to work on a growing collection of North American reptiles, amphibians and fishes (over the following decade at the US National Museum he would publish numerous papers, many of them in collaboration with Baird). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1852

March: According to William H. Dall, the biographer of Spencer Fullerton Baird, Henry Thoreau met this secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who would subsequently send him an AAAS questionnaire and invite him to become a member. Thoreau scholar William Rossi has pointed out that Thoreau seems to have read most of Baird’s substantial publications as they appeared during the rest of the decade.

September 8, Wednesday: During a visit to the Boston area, Spencer Fullerton Baird met Waldo Emerson, an author some of whose essays he had perused, and was taken out to Concord:

Saw R.W. Emerson and with him to Henry Thoreau’s. Visited battleground at Concord. Then to Lexington where dined. Home by Waltham, Weston, and Wayland.

Baird’s biographer confidently asserts that there are no further referenced to Henry Thoreau to be found in this man’s notes. One would like to know how he reacted to Thoreau’s sending him a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS in 1855 — whether he ever perused the book and if so what he thought. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853

After Professor Louis Agassiz savaged his assistant Charles Frédéric Girard, the man had obtained a science job at the Smithsonian Institution, working for Spencer Fullerton Baird. Professor Agassiz, outraged that any part of the scientific establishment would make any use of someone of whom he personally had blacklisted, continued relentlessly to pursue his former assistant:

If you had been willing to listen to my advise [sic] before, you should have known that Girard, though capable of sustained work and endowed with considerable ability in distinguishing the peculiarities of animals, has no judgement, and is utterly unable to trace original researches without supervision. Moreover he is as obstinate as a mule, if contradicted, which makes it necessary that he should be led with a high hand and kept in an entirely subordinate position. Now this supervision of his work you have not made; you have not tested the value of the characters upon which he has based his generic and specific distinctions. I recognize his hand both in the style of the language used, and in the scientific character of the work. In the hurry of your many engagements you have entrusted to him a task to which he is not equal; and there goes forward from the Smithsonian Instit. a production which in quality is far inferior to what is done elsewhere, though by the quantity of the materials you had the means of surpassing every work of that kind.

Girard collected specimens in Maine, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. Baird created the CATALOG OF NORTH AMERICAN REPTILES with Girard’s assistance. Robert Kennicott, Girard, and other young naturalists were urged to form an informal group, known as the “Megatheria.”

It was in approximately this time period that Professor Agassiz of Harvard College began to organize the scientific pressure group of schemers and administrators he referred to as his “Lazzaroni.”20 The work of this group would continue behind the scenes until the creation, in the wee small hours of the 37th Congress, on March 3, 1863, after a decade of plotting and conspiring, of a new disciplinary “jury” (the professor’s term) to be known as the National Academy of Sciences. Here they are depicted attempting to acquire respectability

20. The Lazzaroni of Naples are gangs of pickpockets and con artists who work the street crowds for what they can get. (One of them once tried to sell me a Rolex® for like $40, while I was waiting for a boat at the docks, but I pointed out to the man that my wristwatch had an Indiglo® dial which his Rolex® lacked, that my wristwatch had a day-of-the-week indicator which was practically all I ever looked at on the dial which his Rolex® lacked, that my wristwatch had also cost me about $40 on sale at K- Mart when it had been new a number of years before, and besides the brand name of my wristwatch also ended in “-ex”! I suggested to this gent “Nevertheless, I will be willing to trade you, even-Steven!” –Meanwhile, I was keeping my arm pressed firmly against my wad of cash in the side pocket of my pants under my comb and handkerchief, just in case he was working as a team.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by rubbing against a respectable person (or maybe they’re just trying to distract him and pick his pocket):

At some point during this year Professor Agassiz wrote from Cambridge to Henry Thoreau among others: To: HDT From: Louis Agassiz Date: [1853] {No MS — printed copy — Thoreau’s copy of this form is at Widener Library} DEAR SIR,— Having been engaged for several years in the preparation of a Natural History of the Fishes of the United States, I wish, before beginning the printing of my work, to collect as extensive materials as possible, respecting the geographical distribution of these animals. It has occurred to me, that by means of a circular containing directions for collecting fishes I might obtain the information re- quired. I should, indeed, like to secure separate collections of our fishes from every bay and inlet along the coast, and from every stream, river, creek, lake, and pond upon the mainland, throughout the whole country, and am satisfied that such collections would furnish invaluable information respecting the geographical distribution of our aquatic animals. I would thank you for any assistance and contribution you can furnish from your quarter of the country, and duly acknowledge it in my work; and since I extend my investigations to all the branches of Natural History, any specimens besides fishes, which may be obtained, would be equally acceptable, including geological specimens and fossil remains. In return I would propose exchanges of other specimens if desired, or reciprocate the favor in any other way in my power, and pay the expenses incurred in making collections for me. Specimens from foreign countries are also HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

solicited, especially when their origin is satisfactorily ascertained. Any person into whose hands this circular may come, feeling inclined to correspond with me upon these subjects, is requested to address me under the following direc- tion:—

L. AGASSIZ, Professor of Zoology and Geology in the Lawrence Scientific School, at CAM- BRIDGE, MASS.

[We may suppose that, in the above, in the original printing, the second “o” of the word Zoology would have had an umlaut over it.] [include Directions?]

March 5, Saturday: The Saint Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, a predecessor to The Travelers insurance company, was founded in St. Paul, Minnesota, serving local customers who were having a difficult time getting claim payments in a timely manner from insurance companies on the east coast of the United States.

Henry Thoreau mentioned in his journal that he had received a circular letter early in March or shortly before from a scientist he had met, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the secretary of Louis Agassiz’s American Association

for the Advancement of Science, advising him and, he suspected, “thousand of others,” that he had been proposed for membership in the Association. The letter asked him “to fill in the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science [he] was specially interested in.” Thoreau did not respond, apparently assuming the group would take no action.

March 5, 1853: F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday. They turn out to be my falsely-called chestnut-frontleted bird of the winter. “Linaria minor, Ray. Lesser Redpoll Linnet. From Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine, in winter; inland to Kentucky. Breeds in Maine, Nova Scotia, AUDUBON Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Fur Countries.” –Audubon’s Synopsis. They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it bas been the prevailing bird here this winter. Yesterday I got my grape cuttings. The day before went to the Corner Spring to look at the tufts of green grass. (got some of the very common leptogium (? ?). Is it one of the Collemacæ? Was pleased with the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden willow, and the red of the cornel, now colors are so rare,. Saw the green fine- threaded conferva in a ditch, commonly called frog-spittle. Brought it home in my pocket, and it expanded again in a tumbler. It appeared quite a fresh growth, with what looked like filmy air-bubbles, as big as large shot, in its midst. The secretary of the Association...The secretary for the Association for the Advancement of Science requests me, as he probably has thousands of others, by a printed circular letter from Washington the other day, to fill the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science I was specially interested in, using the term science in the most comprehensive sense possible. Now, though I could state to a select few that department of human inquiry which engages me, and should be rejoiced at an opportunity to do so, I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe or attempt to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations. How absurd that, though I probably stand as near to nature as any of them, and am by constitution as good an observer as most, yet a true account of my relation to nature should excite their ridicule only! If it had been the secretary of an association of which Plato or Aristotle was the president, I should not have hesitated to describe my studies at once and particularly. ARISTOTLE

August 31, Wednesday: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn became engaged to Ariana Smith Walker, his friend since childhood.

In Henry Thoreau’s journal we find a reference to a book that would be a permanent part of his personal library, Spencer Fullerton Baird’s AMERICAN RUMINANTS. ON THE RUMINATING ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA AND THEIR SUSCEPTIBILITY OF DOMESTICATION (US Patent Office. Report. Part 2. Agriculture. 1851, pages 104- 128. Washington, 1852).

Aug. 31. P.M. — To Moore’s Swamp. Bidens cernua well out, the flowering one. The asters and goldenrods are now in their prime, I think. The rank growth of flowers (commonly called weeds) in this swamp now impresses me like a harvest of flowers. I am surprised at their luxuriance and profusion. The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing one, i. e. goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head, with the great white umbel—like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus rising; above it. There are also intermixed Solidago stricta, crechthites (fire-weed), Aster puniceus and longifolius, Galium asprellum in great beds, thoroughwort, trumpet-weed, Polygonum Hydropiper, Epilobium molle, etc., etc. There has been no such rank flowering up to this. One would think that all the poison that is in the earth and air must be extracted out of them by this rank vegetation. The ground is quite mildewy, it is so shaded by them, cellar-like. Raspberries still fresh. I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp. Great black eyries of elderberries now bend down the bushes. Saw a great black spider an inch long, with each of his legs an inch and three quarters long, on the outside of a balloon-shaped web, within which were young and a great bag. Viola pedata out again. Leaves of Hypericum mutilum red about water. Cirsium muticum, in Moore’s Swamp behind Indian field, going out of flower; perhaps out three weeks. Is that very dense-flowered small white aster with short branched racemes A. Tradescanti? — now begin to be conspicuous. A low aster by Brown’s Ditch north of Sleepy hollow like a Radula, but with narrower leaves and more numerous, and scales without herbaceous tips. Au orange-colored fungus. Baird, in Patent Office Report, says, “In all deer, except, perhaps, the reindeer, if the male be castrated when the horns are in a state of perfection, these will never be shed; if the operation be performed when the head is bare, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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they will never be reproduced; and if done when the secretion is going on, a stunted, ill-formed, permanent horn is the result.”

December 19, Monday: Sometime after the incident of the spading competition, Michael Flannery had quit working for Abiel H. Wheeler and become a field laborer instead for Elijah Wood. At this point he discussed this new job with Henry Thoreau and told of his continuing efforts to get his family from Ireland. That evening Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake: An Irishman came to see me to-day, who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past four, milks twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the joints of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before six; and so on, day after day, for six and a half dollars a month; and thus he keeps his virtue in him, if he does not add to it; and he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him; but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does. THOREAU ON THE IRISH From this day into December 21st, Thoreau would be surveying a Corner Spring woodlot that James P. Brown was selling to William Wheeler, which was cut in 1853-1854. (Brown lived near Nut Meadow Brook, and according to the Concord Town Report for 1851-1852, Thoreau had laid out a town road near his house and had been paid $4.00 for this by the town.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/13.htm

Thoreau wrote to Spencer Fullerton Baird in regard to Louis Agassiz’s American Association for the Advancement of Science, to withdraw his name, pleading that he would be unable to attend meetings and explaining that the kind of science he was attracted to was the science of the Reverend Gilbert White’s

THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE

and Alexander von Humboldt’s

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— as he understood very well that this was bound suitably to render him unattractive to them.21

In this letter Thoreau made reference to a poem that had been published anonymously in Punch, or the London Charivari, by Thomas Hood, entitled “The Song of the Shirt.”

In this letter, also, Thoreau made reference to pamphlet of 10 pages of blue paper just put out by the Smithsonian Institution that was going to become part of his personal library, Spencer Fullerton Baird’s DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING COLLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE PARTIES ENGAGED IN THE EXPLORATION OF A ROUTE FOR THE PACIFIC RAILROAD ALONG THE 49TH PARALLEL.

GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 38 If you are going into that line, —going to besiege the city of God, —you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison.

Viking Penguin Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, December 19, 1853 Homer took his convictions about Pond View to Police Chief James Flower. ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58

Concord Dec 19th 53 Mr Blake, My debt has accumulated so that I should have answered your last letter at once, if I had not been the subject of what is called a press of engagements, having a lecture to write for last Wednesday, and surveying more than usual besides. – It has been a kind of running fight with me – the enemy not always behind me, I trust.

21. Harding and Bode, CORRESPONDENCE, pages 309-10. He gave quite a different reason for not becoming a member in his JOURNAL:“The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.” Although it has been alleged many times that this reading had great influence on Henry Thoreau, quite frankly I have been unable myself to verify that Thoreau took this species of nature writing as Waldo Emerson had, with any seriousness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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True, a man cannot lift himself by his own waist-bands, because he cannot get out of himself, but he can expand himself, (which is better, there being no up nor down in nature) and so split his waist- bands, being already within himself. You speak of doing & being – & the vanity real or apparent of much doing – The suckers, I think it is they, make nests in our river in the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, amid which to de- posit their ova. The other day I opened a muskrats’ house. It was made of weeds, five feet broad at base & 3 feet high, and far and low within it was a little cavity, only a foot in diameter where the rat dwelt. It may seem trivial – this piling up of weeds, but so the race of muskrats is preserved. We must heap up a great pile of doing for a small diameter of being. – Is it not imperative on us that we do something – if we only work in a tread-mill? and, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a centre & nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body – employment is to the mind & morals. Consider what an amount of drudgery must be performed – how much hum-drum & prosaic labor goes to any work of the least value. There are so many layers of mere white lime in every shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted. Let not the shell fish think to build his house of that alone; and pray what are its tints to him? Is it not his smooth close-fitting shirt merely? whose tints are not to him, being in the dark, but only when he is gone or dead, and his shell is heaved up to light a wreck upon the beach, do they appear. With him too it is a song of the shirt – “work – work – work” – & this work is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the higher sense, a discipline. If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather ele- vating as a ladder – the means by which we are translated? How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self culture by devotion to his art! The woodsawyer through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better woodsawyer, but measure- ably a better man. Few are the men that can work on their navels – only some Brahmens that I have heard of. To the painter is given some paint & canvass instead. – to the Irishman a bog, – typical of himself. – In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong, – if it is only to make a better paste-blacking – and they are themselves so much the better morally for it. You say that you sit & aspire, but do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it— Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so, persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand suc- cessive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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hanging yourself on account of failure? If you are going into that line – going to besiege the city of God – you must not only be strong in engines – but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison. An Irishman came to see me today who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past 4 & milks 28 cows – (which has swolen the joints of his fingers) & eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before 6 – & so on day after day for six & a half dollars a month – & thus he keeps his virtue in him – if he does not add to it – & he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him – but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does – If my joints are not swolen, it must be because I deal with the teats of celestial cows before break-fast, (and the milker in this case is always allowed some of the milk for his breakfast) to say nothing of the flocks & herds of Admetus afterward. It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part. If the mark is high & far, you must not only aim aright, but draw the bow with all your might. You must qualify your self to use a bow which no humbler archer can bend. Work – work – work! Who shall know it for a bow? It is not of yew-tree. It is straighter than a ray of light – flexibility is not known for one of its qualities.

Dec 22nd So far I had got when I was called off to survey. – Pray read the Life of Haydon the painter – if you have not. It is a small revelation for these latter days – a great satisfaction to know that he has lived – though he is now dead. Have you met with the letter of a Turkish cadi at the end of Layard’s “Nineveh & Babylon” that also is re- freshing & a capital comment on the whole book which preceeds it – the oriental genius speaking through him. Those Brahmins put it through, they come off – or rather stand still, conquerors, with some withered arms or legs at least to show — & they are said to have cultivated the faculty of abstraction to a degree unknown to Europeans, – If we cannot sing of faith & triumph – we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls & there are night owls – and each is beautiful & even musical while about its business. Might you not find some positive work to do with your back to Church & State – letting your back do all the rejection of them? Can you not go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the winding mountain path whither you face? A step more will make those funereal church bells over your shoulder sound far and sweet as a natural sound HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

Work – work – work! Why not make a very large mud pie & bake it in the sun! Only put no church nor state into it, nor upset any other pepper -box that way. – Dig out a wood-chuck for that has nothing to do with rotting institu- tions – Go ahead. Whether a man spends his day in an extacy or despondency – he must do some work to show for it – even as there are flesh & bones to show for him. We are superior to the joy we experience. Your last 2 letters methinks have more nerve & will in them than usual – as if you had erected yourself more – Why are not they good work – if you only had a hundred correspondents to tax you? Make your failure tragical – by the earnestness & steadfastness of your endeavor – & then it will not differ from success – Prove it to be the inevitable fate of mortals – of one mortal – if you can. You said that you were writing on immortality – I wish you would communicate to me what you know about that – you are sure to live while that is your theme – Thus I write on some text which a sentence of your letters may have furnished. I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a new coat – if I have money enough left – I will write to you again about it. Henry D. Thoreau BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1855

Thomas Ewbank’s THE WORLD A WORKSHOP, OR THE PHYSICAL RELATION OF MAN TO THE EARTH.

The 1st US Naval Scientific Expedition had been that of Charles WilkesCHARLES WILKES to the Pacific Ocean and the 2d that of William Francis Lynch to Palestine. The 3d such expedition had been that of Lt. James Melville Gilliss to South America. It had traveled overland to Panama City and then via the South Pacific to Callao, Valparaiso, and Santiago. It had included a subsidiary expedition that explored northern Chile as far as La Paz, Bolivia. During this year it resulted in publication of THE U.S. NAVAL ASTRONOMICAL EXPEDITION TO THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE DURING THE YEARS 1849-’50-’51-’52. The 1st volume covered the geography, resources, history, and political situation of Chile and included a narrative of the overland travels. There was a folding panoramic view of the city of Santiago from the summit of Santa Lucia.

The 2d volume contained reports on natural history subjects plus a narrative of Archibald MacRae’s journey across the Andes and the pampas of the Argentine Provinces. John Cassin’s report on birds contained colored bird plates. Spencer Fullerton Baird submitted reports on general zoology, botany, and paleontology.22 22. The 3d volume contained tables of astronomic observations, made at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Santiago, Chile. Volumes 4 and 5 never got published. The 6th volume contained astronomic observations and experiments made in Chile and at other observatories. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

Volumes 1 and 2 would be in the library of Waldo Emerson and would be accessed by Henry Thoreau in about 1858. He would copy details about the natural resources of Chile by Lt. Gilliss, and about South American Indian remains by Thomas Ewbank, into his Indian Notebook #10 and his Fact Book. US NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., I US NAVAL ASTRO. EXPED., II HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1858

Charles Frédéric Girard wrote the report on Herpetology for the United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838-1842 under the command of Captain Charles Wilkes (for government reasons, however, the author of this needed to be cited as Spencer Fullerton Baird, who asserted in the introduction that he himself had not touched pen to paper on the project).

November 27: Henry Thoreau mentioned, in his journal, that some small bream Pomotis obesus had been caught by Spencer Fullerton Baird in the Charles River in Holliston, and referred also to Baird’s assistant Charles Frédéric Girard (this had to do with a four-page announcement that had appeared in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY for 1854). BSNH 1854, PAGES 39-42

November 27: Those barren hollows and plains in the neighborhood of Walden are singular places. I see many which were heavily wooded fifteen or thirty years ago now covered only with fine sedge, sweet-fern, or a few birches, willows, poplars, small wild cherries, panicled cornels, etc. They need not amount to hollows at all: many of them are glades merely, and all that region is elevated, but the surrounding higher ground, though it may be only five or ten feet higher, will be covered with a good growth. One should think twice before he cut off such places. Perhaps they had better never be laid bare, but merely thinned out. We do not begin to understand the treatment of woodland yet. On such spots you will see various young trees – and some of them which I have named – dead as if a fire had run through them, killed apparently by frost. I find scarlet oak acorns like this;

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns Scarlet Oak do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base, and Emerson represents but one form of the fruit.23The leaf of this was not very deeply cut, was broad for its length. I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. As I now count, the dorsal fin-rays are 9-10 (Girard says 9-11), caudal 17 (with apparently 4 short on each side), anal 3-11, pectoral 11, ventral l-5.24 They have about BREAM seven transverse dark bars, a vertical dark mark under eye, and a dark spot on edge of operculum. They appear to be the young of the Pomotis obesus, described by Charles Girard to the Natural History Society in April, ’54, obtained by Baird in fresh water about Hingham and in Charles River in Holliston.25 I got more perfect specimens than the bream drawn above. They are exceedingly pretty seen floating dead on their sides in a bowl of water, with all their fins spread out. From their size and form and position they cannot fail to remind you of coins in the basin. The conspicuous transverse bars distinguish them at once. This is the form of the dorsal fin, which consists of two parts, the foremost of shorter stiff, spiny rays, the other eleven at least half as long again

23. Vide Jan. 19th, 1859. 24. Vide December 3d. Vide also March 26. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

and quite flexible and waving, falling together like a wet rag out of water.

So, with the anal fin, the three foremost rays are short and spiny, as I see, and one of each of the ventral (according to Girard, and to me). These foremost rays in each case look like slender raking masts, and their points project beyond the thin web of the fin, whose edge looks like the ropes which stretch from masthead to masthead, loopwise. The stiff and spiny foremost part of the fins evidently serves for a cut-water which bears the brunt of any concussion and perhaps may serve for weapons of offense, while the more ample and gently waving flexible after part more especially guides the motions of the fish. The transverse bars are continued across these parts of the dorsal and anal fins, as the markings of a turtle across its feet or flippers; methinks the fins of the minnows are peculiarly beautiful. How much more remote the newly discovered species seems to dwell than the old and familiar ones, though both inhabit the same pond! Where the Pomotis obesus swims must be a new country, unexplored by science. The seashore may be settled, but aborigines dwell unseen only thus far inland. This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. The water which such a fish swims in must still have a primitive forest decaying in it.

25. [A newspaper clipping pasted into the Journal contains the following extract from a report of the proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History:– “Specimens of Pomotis and Esox, and of amphibians, were presented by Mr. H.D. Thoreau, from Concord, Mass. Mr. Putnam was of opinion that one of the Pomotis would prove a new species. There are with us two varieties of pickerel commonly known as the long or shovel-nosed, and the short or trout-nosed; these specimens were of the latter. Mr. Putnam was inclined to think these were distinct species, unless the differences should prove to be sexual. Drs. D. H. and H R. Storer considered them varieties of the same species; Messrs. Baird and Girard think them (Esox reticulatus and E. ornatus) distinct.” Another clipping says:– “Mr. F.W. Putnam at a previous meeting stated that possibly the young Pomotis presented by Mr. Thoreau were the P. obesus of Girard. He had since then examined Girard’s original specimens, and he finds that they are the same. The P. guttatus recently described in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia is identical with P. obesus. Having teeth on the palatines, and consequently belonging to the genus Bryttus, the proper name for the species is B. obesus (Putnam). He had also satisfied himself that the Esox ornatus of Girard is the same as the E. fasciatus of De Kay.”] HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1860

October 13, Saturday: In New-York, Edward, Prince of Wales was photographed by Matthew Brady. (Presumably, since this was before the prince became widely known as “Dirty Bertie,” he wouldn’t have been hiding anything that looks like a stinkhorn mushroom behind that hat.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

Henry Thoreau wrote to Dr. Samuel Kneeland, Jr. of the Boston Society of Natural History.

In the course of this communication he made reference to Spencer Fullerton Baird’s MAMMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. THE DESCRIPTIONS OF SPECIES BASED CHIEFLY ON THE COLLECTIONS IN THE MUSEUM OF THE HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (Philadelphia: J.B. Lipincott & Co., 1859).

Concord Oct 13th 1860 Dr. Samuel Kneeland Dear Sir, The members of the Nat. Hist. Soc. may be interested to hear, that a female Canada Lynx (L. Canadensis, or Loup [Cervier]) was killed, on the 9.th of September, in Carlisle, HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

about three miles from the middle of Concord. I saw the carcass, & have the skin & skull, which I have set up. It is as large as any of its kind which I find described. I was at first troubled to identify it in the books, because it has naked soles, though [I] believed

Page 2 it to be the Canadensis. Audubon & Bachman give “soles hairy” as one of the specific characters of this species, and “soles naked” as a specific character of L. Rufus. Emmons [(]in the Massachusetts['] Reports) says further & more particularly, “The two most remarkable characters of the Lynx [[i.e. [the] Canadensis]] are the beautiful pencils of black hair which orna- ment the ears, and the perfect hairiness of the soles of the feet, which have no naked spots or tubercles like the other species of the feline race:” and, speaking of the Bay Lynx, he says that it “is easily distinguished from the preceding by

Page 3 the shorter pencils of hair upon the ear, and by the nakedness of the balls of the toes. This last character, it appears to me, is sufficiently important HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

in the borealis [i.e. Canadensis] to constitute it a genus by itself[.]” At length, I obtained a copy of Baird's “Mammals[“;] but still I was not satisfied till I had read to near the end of his account, when he says that he has received a second specimen, “in summer pelage”, and that “the pads of the feet in this specimen are distinctly visible, not being at all overgrown, as in winter specimens.” This is my animal, both in this

Page 4 [and] in other respects. I am thus minute because it is not yet made quite distinct enough, that hairy soles are no more characteristic of this Lynx than naked soles are. Judging from the above descriptions, the only peculiarity in any specimen is a distinct black line commencing at the eye and terminating in the black portion of the ruff. I suspect that some of the Lynxes killed in this vicinity of late years, and called the Bay Lynx, were the Canada Lynx. Yrs truly Henry D. Thoreau

October 13. P.M. – Up river. I find no new cones on Monroe’s larch by the river, but many old ones (the same was the case with the hemlocks HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

on Assabet), unless those imperfect ones with a twig growing from their extremity were this year’s, – but I think they were last year’s. Last year both white pine, hemlock, and larches bore abundantly and there were very few white oak acorns. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any?) or hemlock or larch, and a great abundance of white oak acorns in all parts of the town. So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This is a white oak year, not a pine year. It is also an apple and a potato year. I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees. There are but few in the woods. Those spreading trees that stand in open pastures fully exposed to the light and air are the most fertile ones. I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. I speak of it to many whom I meet, but I find few to sympathize with me. They seem to care much more for potatoes. The Indians say that many acorns are a sign of a cold winter. It is a cold fall at any rate. The shore at Clamshell is greened with pontederia seed which has floated up and been left there, with some button-bush seed and some of those slender bulbs of the lysimachia and those round green leaf-buds of the Utricularia vulgaris. Thus, probably, are all these dispersed. I also see large masses of the last-named weed lodged against the bridges, etc., with the conspicuous greener leaf-buds attached. I find no yellow lily seeds, only a few white lily seed-pods. These are full of seeds the color of apple seeds and but a quarter as big. They sink in water as soon as the slimy matter which invests them is washed off. I see a white lily stem coiled up with many whorls like a wire spring.

They are almost only white lily pads that are left now. There is some of the fresh-water sponge in this the main stream too. The F. hyemalis back, and I think I see and hear the shore larks. The shrub oaks on J. Hosmer’s hillside this side of Hollowell place have already passed the height of their beauty. Is it not early on account of frost?

At Holden Swamp.–Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully wintryish. I see many pine and oak tree tops in the woods that were blown off last spring. They lie many rods from their trunks, so that I have to look a little while to tell where they came from. Moreover, the butt of the piece over which I stand looks so large compared with the broken shaft up there so high that I at first feel sure it did not come from there, – which [?] it did, – and so am puzzled to locate it. The lentago fruit is quite sweet and reminds me of dates in their somewhat mealy pulp. It has large flat black HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

seeds, somewhat like watermelon seeds, but not so long. The scientific differs from the poetic or lively description somewhat as the photographs, which we so weary of viewing, from paintings and sketches, though this comparison is too favorable to science. All science is only a makeshift, a means to an end which is never attained. After all, the truest description, and that by which another living man can most readily recognize a flower, is the unmeasured and eloquent one which the sight of it inspires. No scientific description will supply the want of this, though you should count and measure and analyze every atom that seems to compose it. Surely poetry and eloquence are a more universal language than that Latin which is confessedly dead. In science, I should say, all description is postponed till we know the whole, but then science itself will be cast aside. But unconsidered expressions of our delight which any natural object draws from us are something complete and final in themselves, since all nature is to be regarded as it concerns man; and who knows how near to absolute truth such unconscious affirmations may come? Which are the truest, the sublime conceptions of Hebrew poets and seers, or the guarded statements of modem geologists, which we must modify or unlearn so fast? As they who were present early at the discovery of gold in California, and observed the sudden fall in its value, have most truly described that state of things, so it is commonly the old naturalists who first received American plants that describe them best. A scientific description is such as you would get if you should send out the scholars of the polytechnic school with all sorts of metres made and patented to take the measures for you of any natural object. In a sense you have got nothing new thus, for every object that we see mechanically is mechanically daguerreotyped on our eyes, but a true description growing out [OF] the perception and appreciation of it is itself a new fact, never to be daguerreotyped, indicating the highest quality of the plant, – its relation to man, – of far more importance than any merely medicinal quality that it may possess, or be thought to-day to possess. There is a certainty and permanence about this kind of observation, too, that does not belong to the other, for every flower and weed has its day in the medical pharmacopoeia, but the beauty of flowers is perennial in the taste of men. Truly this is a world of vain delights. We think that men have a substratum of common sense but sometimes are peculiarly frivolous. But consider what a value is seriously and permanently attached to gold and so-called precious stones almost universally. Day and night, summer and winter, sick or well, in war and in peace, men speak of and believe in gold as a great treasure. By a thousand comparisons they prove their devotion to it. If wise men or true philosophers bore any considerable proportion to the whole number of men, gold would be treated with no such distinction. Men seriously and, if possible, religiously believe in and worship gold. They hope to earn golden opinions, to celebrate their golden wedding. They dream of the golden age. Now it is not its intrinsic beauty or value, but its rarity and arbitrarily attached value, that distinguishes gold. You would think it was the reign of shams. The one description interests those chiefly who have not seen the thing; the other chiefly interests those who have seen it and are most familiar with it, and brings it home to the reader. We like to read a good description of no thing so well as of that which we already know the best, as our friend, or ourselves even. In proportion as we get and are near to our object, we do without the measured or scientific account, which is like the measure they take, or the description they write, of a man when he leaves his country, and insert in his passport for the use of the detective police of other countries. The men of science merely look at the object with sinister eye, to see if [it] corresponds with the passport, and merely vise or make some trifling additional mark on its passport and let it go; but the real acquaintances and friends which it may have in foreign parts do not ask to see nor think of its passport. Gerard has not only heard of and seen and raised a plant, but felt and smelled and tasted it, applying all his senses to it. You are not distracted from the thing to the system or arrangement. In the true natural order the order or system is not insisted on. Each is first, and each last. That which presents itself to us each moment occupies the whole of the present and rests on the very topmost point of the sphere, under the zenith. The species and individuals of all the natural kingdoms ask our attention and admiration in a round robin. We make straight lines, putting a captain at their head and a lieutenant at their tails, with sergeants and corporals all along the line and a flourish of trumpets near the beginning, insisting on a particular uniformity where nature has made curves to which belongs their own sphere-music. It is indispensable for us to square her circles, and we offer our rewards to him who will do it. Who [sic] describes the most familiar object with a zest and vividness of imagery as if he saw it for the first time, the novelty consisting not in the strangeness of the object, but in the new and clearer perception of it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1864

August: In setting up the National Academy of Sciences, Louis Agassiz’s bully-boy “Lazzaroni” had excluded a number of reputable potential members. Spencer Fullerton Baird, who had offended by hiring as an assistant at the Smithsonian Institution the researcher Charles Frédéric Girard whom Agassiz had fired, had been pointedly excluded as “only a descriptive scientist.” To make sure they carried the day, the Lazzaroni had been less than frank with their colleagues about what they were doing and to whom they were doing it. Then when inquiries began to be raised, there was talk about how they had had “opportunities for inductions upon … parts of their lives,” regarding folks like Baird and George Phillips Bond of the Harvard Observatory, which had led to “distinct conclusions” that such men were “too mean to bring into our Academy.” As more and more of this networking came to the attention of the less well connected members, there was a definite groundswell of resentment, and, in spite of the fact that “Mr. Agassiz lost his temper —and as I found next day —took personal offense,” eventually Baird would be enrolled as a member.26

THE SCIENCE OF 1864

26. Rivinus, E.F. and E.M. Youssef. SPENCER BAIRD OF THE SMITHSONIAN. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1874

Over the following decade Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway would be issuing the three volumes of A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS (Boston: Little, Brown). For the time being this would deal only with land birds. For these volumes Dr. Brewer was the author of the life histories of the birds — which actually comprises about 2/3ds of the material. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1884

Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway’s THE WATER BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA (two volumes, posthumous; unfortunately, Google Books does not yet seem to have scanned Volume I). WATER BIRDS, VOL. I WATER BIRDS, VOL. II HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

1887

August 19: Four German warships arrived off Apia, Samoa and landed about a hundred soldiers. The government officials of King Malietoa fled as best they might.

Alvan Clark died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Spencer Fullerton Baird died at Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: June 2, 2014

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Spencer Fullerton Baird HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.