Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/460

 the Prince of Orange he was re-appointed ordinary lord of session (1689), and retained his seat upon the bench until his death in 1698. In the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh are preserved certain papers in the handwriting of Lord Newbyth, being a collection of decisions ranging from 1664 to 1667, and a collection of practiques belonging to the period between 1664 and 1681.



BAIRD, JOHN, D.D. (d. 1804), Irish divine, came to Dublin from the Isle of Man, and was ordained minister of the presbyterian congregation of Capel Street 11 Jan. 1767. Here he ministered for ten years, not very happily, and in 1777 he was compelled to resign. Shortly after doing so he brought out the first and only volume of a projected series on the Old Testament; a work of some learning, originally delivered as lectures at Capel Street, and dedicated (12 Nov. 1777) to James Trail, bishop of Down. Baird soon afterwards conformed, and on 7 Sept. 1782 was appointed by the crown to the rectory of Cloghran, near Dublin, where he died unmarried early in 1804. He published 'Dissertations, Chronological, Historical, and Critical, of all the Books of the Old Testament; through which are interspersed Reflections, Theological and Moral,' &c., Dublin, 1778, vol. i. (extending to Exod. xx.)



BAIRD, JOHN (1799–1861), Scotch divine, the eldest son of the Rev. James Baird, who was successively minister of Legertwood, Eccles, and Swinton, all in Berwickshire, was born at Eccles 17 Feb. 1799, and educated in the grammar schools of Whitsome and Kelso. Later he proceeded to the university of Edinburgh, where, in 1823, he founded the Plinian Society for the study of natural history, and was its first president. Going to Ireland in 1825, he was for some time engaged by the Irish Evangelical Society as one of their preachers. In 1829 he was ordained minister of Yetholm, Roxburghshire, where he died 29 Nov. 1861. A colony of gipsies, who were little better than heathens, had long been settled at Kirk Yetholm, and Baird set himself resolutely to reclaim these people, and to make them christians and useful members of society. The work was done in connection with a society formed in Edinburgh for the 'Reformation of the Gipsies in Scotland,' and it met with a considerable amount of success. Baird wrote the 'Scottish Gipsies' Advocate,' Edinburgh, 1839, and contributed an 'Account of the Parish of Yetholm' to the 'New Statistical Account of Scotland.' A memoir of him, by W. Baird (London, 1862), contains a list of words used by the gipsies of Yetholm, compared with Grellman's list of the continental gipsy language, and the corresponding words in Hindustani.



BAIRD, WILLIAM, M.D. (1803–1872), physician, was born at Eccles, and educated at the High School, Edinburgh. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris, and entered the service of the East India Company as surgeon. He was a zoologist of considerable ability, and communicated several papers to the Zoological and Linnean Societies. In 1829 he helped to establish the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, which served to extend the pursuit of natural science. In 1860 his important work on the 'Natural History of British Entomostraca' was published by the Ray Society, and in 1858 he published a 'Cyclopædia of the Natural Sciences.' For some time he practised in London, but eventually accepted an appointment in the zoological department of the British Museum, which he held from 1841 to the time of his death on 27 Jan. 1872.

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