ber to nearly fifty, producing 300,000 tons annually and
employing 10,000 hands. The brothers became great landowners, and James was
M.P. for the Falkirk burghs in 1851-1852 and 1852-1857. He died at his
estate near Ayr on the 20th of June 1876, leaving property valued at three
million pounds. He had been during his life a great public benefactor,
founding schools and the Baird Lectures (1871) for the defence of orthodox
theology, and in 1873 the Baird Trust of L500,000 to enable the Established
Church of Scotland to cope with the spiritual needs of the masses. He was
twice married but left no children.

BAIRD, SPENCER FULLERTON (1823-1887), American naturalist, was born in
Reading, Pennsylvania, on the 3rd of [v.03 p.0225] February 1823. He
graduated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1840, and next
year made an ornithological excursion through the mountains of
Pennsylvania, walking, says one of his biographers, "400 m. in twenty-one
days, and the last day 60 m." In 1838 he met J. J. Audubon, and
thenceforward his studies were largely ornithological, Audubon giving him a
part of his own collection of birds. After studying medicine for a time,
Baird became professor of natural history in Dickinson College in 1845,
assuming also the duties of the chair of chemistry, and giving instruction
in physiology and mathematics. This variety of duties in a small college
tended to give him that breadth of scientific interest which characterized
him through life, and made him perhaps the most representative general man
of science in America. For the long period between 1850 and 1878 he was
assistant-secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and on the
death of Joseph Henry he became secretary. From 1871 till his death he was
U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. While an officer of the
Smithsonian, Baird's duties included the superintendence of the labour of
workers in widely different lines. Thus, apart from his assistance to
others, his own studies and published writings cover a broad range:
iconography, geology, mineralogy, botany, anthropology, general zoology,
and, in particular, ornithology; while for a series of years he edited an
annual volume summarizing progress in all scientific lines of
investigation. He gave general superintendence, between 1850 and 1860, to
several government expeditions for scientific exploration of the western
territories of the United States, preparing for them a manual of