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irritated that he seemed above the give-and-take of politics, the longtime Republican speaker of the state house of representatives complained that with Roosevelt now in Albany the Republicans’ strength was “sixty and one-half members.” Rarely had Albany had an independent-minded legislator so determined to be nonpartisan. The Republicans, then, saw Roosevelt as an annoyance, and the Democrats loathed him no end; these bad feelings were reciprocated. “There are some twenty-five Irish Democrats in the House,” Roosevelt wrote in his diary. “They are a stupid, sodden, vicious lot, most of them being equally deficient in brains and virtue.”71 On another occasion, unafraid of sounding elitist, Roosevelt noted that Tammany Hall Democrats were “totally unable to speak with even an approximation to good grammar; not even one of them can string three intelligible sentences together to save his neck.” 72

Roosevelt’s closest friend in the New York legislature was—not surprisingly—Bill O’Neill, who lived in remote Saint Regis Falls in the Adirondacks. Much like Sewall, O’Neill was an honest backwoods type, obedient to existing laws, the owner of a rural general store who also ran a creamery. O’Neill later recalled that Roosevelt—who had published the only bird key of his Franklin County district—had constantly worried him; he was rocking the boat too much in 1882–1883 with his uncompromising reformist zeal. “In all the unimportant things we seemed far apart,” Roosevelt wrote fondly about O’Neill in An Autobiography, “but in all the important things we were close together…. Fortune favored me, whereas her hand was heavy against Billy O’Neill. All his life he had to strive hard to wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant fate; if fate had been but a little kinder, I believe he would have had a great political career.” 73

A telling sign that Roosevelt was drifting away from being a professional naturalist and toward a career in politics was a letter he wrote to Elliott Coues in April 1882, just three months after taking office. Unsentimentally, T.R. offered to donate the bulk of his “Roosevelt Museum” holdings to the Smithsonian Institution. Coues immediately forwarded Roosevelt’s letter to Spencer F. Baird, the secretary of the Smithsonian.74

Up to that point only Louis Agassiz of Harvard University had done more than Baird to promote American zoology. Raised in eastern Pennsylvania, Baird had attended Dickinson College, where he was known as the “opossum hunter.” Baird’s career was helped when, on a collecting trip in Vermont during the summer of 1847, he encountered Congressman George Perkins Marsh, the originator of the term “conservationism in modern usage.” Stunned by Baird’s self-taught knowledge of American wildlife, Marsh ended up recommending a few years later that the young outdoorsman be hired by the new Smithsonian Institution. Baird embarked on a prestigious career there, and in 1878 became its second leader. Beyond his administrative duties, Baird inventoried North American birds, sponsored wilderness explorations, promoted systematic biology, and of course tirelessly raised funds on behalf of the Smithsonian.75 If all that wasn’t enough, with the possible exception of Robert B. Roosevelt—with whom he corresponded—nobody rallied against the depletion of American fish with as much vim and vigor as Baird, who simultaneously served as the commissioner of the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries.76

From young manhood onward, Baird, known for his trademark thoughtful frown, was America’s genius at collecting and classifying wild-life. Audubon respected Baird so much that he named his last bird Baird’s bunting (Ammadramus bairdi). At a time when natural history was an avocation, Baird upgraded specimen collecting to a vocation. He was a “collector of collectors,” and Robert B. Roosevelt was one of his finest clients and friends.77 When Baird was appointed as the first commissioner for the U.S. Commission on Fish and Fisheries in 1871 (by President Grant), tasked with replenishing fish populations and promoting