390 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



24th of January, and was received with the greatest 

 enthusiasm. His health was already precarious and his 

 death occurred in the following December. 



Baird was already beginning to have attacks of illness 

 due to irregular action of the heart. No treatment seemed 

 to remedy the evil. 



In May hatching of shad was inaugurated on the 

 Potomac in the hope of saving its depleted fisheries. The 

 summer station of the Fish Commission was at Peake's 

 Island, near Portland, Maine. The steamer "Bluelight" 

 commanded by Captain Beardslee 6 was lent by the navy 

 for the season. Both before and after the fishing season 

 Baird served on a board of enquiry concerning the Polaris 

 Arctic expedition of Capt Hall, who had died in the North, 

 and whose party had been exposed to serious dangers. 



In 1874 Baird's attacks of illness became more fre- 

 quent. Mrs. Baird's health seemed chronically broken. 

 Notwithstanding this the generous hospitality of their 

 home was not restricted. A search of the Journal, where 

 all visitors are carefully recorded, shows in five years 

 less than half a dozen days when there were no guests 

 of the house. Christmas dinner always included all the 

 unmarried Smithsonian students who were in the city. 



Preparations were already beginning for the exhibit 

 to be made at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, at 

 Philadelphia. The ^summer Fisheries station was at 

 Noank, Connecticut, where consultation with numerous 



6 Lester Anthony Beardslee, Rear Admiral U. S. N., born at 

 Little Falls, New York, Feb. i, 1836; married Evelyn Small in 1863; 

 retired from active service, Feb. I, 1898; and died in 1903. One of 

 the naval officers detailed to U. S. Fish Commission work with Baird, 

 a pleasing writer on hunting and fishing, and for a long time stationed 

 in Alaska. 



