The Naming Of The Shrew

By davidbunch

The mid-nineteenth century was an era of exploration and biological collecting, and some of the great expeditions to the West were sending back to Washington immense collections of specimens representing the fauna and flora of the new western territories. Among them were hundreds of new species of animals and plants, recent and fossil, and it was Spencer Fullerton Baird´s task to organize the highly exacting work of study and classification of these specimens at the Smithsonian Institute. Many of them he described and named himself, and taxonomic literature abounds in new genera and species of animals bearing the name of Baird as describer. Baird also became, in effect, adviser to the Government on matters of exploration, and his reports, many of them published by Congress, are still classic.

An exploring expedition to Alaska by the Overland Telegraph Co., organized to build a line to Europe by way of Siberia and Alaska (the Atlantic cable having failed), was composed in part by Robert Kennicott, William H. Dall, H. M. Bannister, G. W. Maynard, H. W. Elliott, and Charles Pease, all under the auspices of the Smithsonian. Kennicott, who had previous experience, 1859 to 1862, in the Mackenzie River region, Canada, died near Nalato in the spring of 1866. Soon after, the ocean cable now assured of success, the whole matter of an overland telegraph line was dropped, and the party was disbanded. In 1867, when tbe purchase of Alaska from Russia was being hotly debated in Congress, Baird was called upon for a report, and, using the first-hand data received from the Kennicott party, he was able to furnish Secretary of State Seward and Senator Sumner with information that must have been convincing.

As one writer has put it, 'Baird pointed out the wealth of furs, fish, and timber, and showed that gold and copper had been found in the Territory, and that agricultural crops could be raised there. Apparently practically all the specific information regarding the value of the Territory, including the usefulness of Sitka Harbor as a base for naval vessels, was supplied either by the Smithsonian Institution or by men who had worked in Alaska under its auspices.' Baird was preeminent also as an organizer. He is credited with being the initiator of the United States Fish Commission, later the Bureau of Fisheries and now part of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and he was its first commissioner. He was godfather to the National Museum, and his broad knowledge and interest in all its branches was the mainstay of its first Struggling years.

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