44 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



reserved for him in our cosy tent until a kind Providenc3 

 shall enable him, unhampered by any special obligation to 

 an exacting public, to try his 'prentice hand on ths lordly 

 salmon. 



Although Gov. Seymour may not be technically classed 

 among the brotherhood, he has the simple habits and aes- 

 thetic tastes of the contemplative angler. No one has a 

 nicer appreciation of the beauty and grandeur of forest 

 scenery, or of the beneficent influence upon mind and heart 

 and body of an occasional sojourn in the silent woods. It 

 is a rare pleasure to listen to his graphic descriptions of what 

 ho has seen and felt and enjoyed during his rambles in the 

 Ailirondacks. Unlike most of the visitors to that pictur- 

 esque region, he was most charmed by his winter excur- 

 sions, when the solitude of the woods was doubly solitary, 

 and when the mid-winter camp-fire gave an aspect to all its 

 surroundings as weird-like as it was fascinating. "You 

 ought to go to the woods in mid-winter," he said to me o 

 one occasion. "You will never have seen them in their 

 sublimest grandeur and magnificence until you do.'* The 

 very last conversation I had with him was on the always 

 interesting subject to the angler of fish food, and the reasons 

 why some streams are so much more prolific than others. 

 His theory is the existence of a weed which attracts to itself 

 ani holds, if it does not produce, a species of insect or ani- 

 malculae of which fish, especially trout, are fond, and upon 

 which they thrive. This weed can, he believes, be trans- 

 planted and should be introduced into all waters where 

 trout ara found. A treatisa from his pen on this subject 

 wouli ba an important and valuable addition to the multi- 

 tude of papers on practical thames which he has written. As 

 one of our honored fish commissioners, such a treatise would 

 come within his official province, and form an important 

 addition to our piscatorial literature. Who will say 

 what influence this love of the silent woods and the 

 peaceful repose of rural life has had in moulding and de- 

 veloping the social virtues and pure public character of this 

 unique and distinguished statesman? None of our public 



