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 * 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. 1, 1836; married Evelyn Small in 1863; 
retired from active service, Feb. 1, 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. 
