Hints for Preserving Objects of Natural History

While a professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, only a few years after he had been a student there himself, Spencer Baird published these instructions for collecting specimens of plants and animals. Two years later, Baird was selected to be the Assistant Secretary of the newly-founded Smithsonian Institution, and he brought with him to Washington his own collections that filled two railroad box-cars. This copy of his slim publication is housed in an old acidic "pamphlet" folder that needs to be replaced.