SIR DAVID BAIRD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the review of " Sir David Baird " by Captain W. H. Wilkin, in the Spectator of April 26th, it is stated—presumably from the book itself—that Sir David, the fifth son of William Baird of Newbyth, "was born at New byth, Aberdeenshire, in December 1757." There is a double mistake here. Sir David Baird was descended from a junior branch of the Bairds of Auchmedden, in Aberdeenshire—a branch which at one time owned Newbyth in that county. But one of the family sold this estate (as far• back as 1667), and purchased a property in Haddingtonshire, to which he transferred the name of Newbyth. So that if Sir David Baird were born at Newbyth, as commonly stated, it would be at the Haddingtonshire Newbyth, not the .Aberdeenshire one. Even the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" falls into the error of placing the Newbyth of Sir David's birth in Aberdeenshire—an error, however, not perpetrated by the Scottish Encyclopaedia, that of Chambers. But the Scottish Nation, correcting Theodore Hook's biography of the hero, which made Newbyth his birthplace, says Baird was born in Edinburgh, and quotes as follows from " Wilson's Memories of Edinburgh " : " The house in which he first saw the light, and where he was brought up, is situated in a court at the foot of Blair•'s Close, Castlehill, Edinburgh, at one time possessed by the ducal family of Gordon, and latterly by the Newbyth family, by whom it was held for several generations."—I am,
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