APPRECIATIONS AND HONORS 148 



swamps and woods occupy in the animal kingdom. In this man- 

 ner he does much to remove prejudices against insects, birds and 

 reptiles deemed noxious, and this helps to preserve the biological 

 balance among associated fauna. 



Now it happens that students and scientists who have become 

 eminent in their profession are usually so segregated and intent 

 on their transcendental pursuits that they often fail to become 

 conspicuous among the world's honor men ; and hundreds of such 

 are enrolled on the unpublished book of the immortals whom the 

 general public has never heard of, simply because they occupy a 

 superlatively higher plane. These have no time to exploit their 

 achievements. Such a man, I may be peraiitted to say, is George A. 

 Boardman of Calais, Maine, an ornithologist of highest repute 

 among scientists, a contemporary and whilom associate and co- 

 worker with Audubon, Agassiz, Downs, Todd, Baird and Bethuue, 

 those studious observers of natural objects whose renown lingers 

 after their departure like the afterglow of a midsummer sunset. 

 Scores of his rarest specimens have gone into the Government 

 collections at Washington, not without a transient pang, yet with 

 heroic recognition begotten of a keen sense of Uncle Sam's 

 priority and inherent right of possession. For example, he had 

 in his museum at Calais (which is installed in a spacious two- story 

 building devoted exclusively to the purpose) an incomparable lot 

 of Indian stone implements of most every kind, including some 

 fine spear heads found at the Grand Lake Stream while digging 

 for the first dam in 1860, not far from Dr. Bethune's old camp. 

 Prof. Baird, he remai'ks, ingenuously enough, "thought the Gov- 

 ernment Museum had the best right to them and took them away." 



"When Prof. Baird used to visit me," he writes, " we used to 

 go among the elderly people and pick up lots of trumpery such as 

 spinning wheels, flax wheels, old canoes and Indian things. I had 

 a queer old wooden anchor which was dragged up in the lake, 

 such as Indians used to hold their canoes while fishing. Baird 

 thought this a good find. There was a shell heap about twelve 

 miles below here that we used frequently to visit and dig over. 

 He was a very happy man when on the hunt for relics. Even 

 after he was taken sick he used to write me that he wanted to 

 come up and finish that shell heap." 



