204 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[April 13, 1388. 



GEORGE SHEPAED PAGE. 



\\T-E present out readers this week -with a picture of the 

 new President of the American Fishcultural Associa- 

 tion; and such portions of his life as an angler and fish- 

 culturist as will be of interest. 



Mr. Page was born in Readfield, Kennebec county, Maine, 

 on July 29, 1838, and in 1843 his family moved to Chelsea, 

 a suburb of Boston, where he was educated in the primary, 

 grammar, and high schools. 



At an early age he manifested that interest in matters 

 piscatorial which has since made him so well known among 

 American anglers and fishcultunsts. 



In 1857-8 he visited St. Anthony, Minn., and was one of 

 the early visitors to Lake Minnetonka, in which famous lake 

 he captured many large pike. In 1860 he made his first visit 

 to the Rangeley Lakes of Maine, by invitation of his cousin, 

 Hon. Henry 0. Stanley, Pish Commissioner of the State, 

 and here took his first trout, which weighed two and a half 

 pounds, from the apron of the upper dam. During tins trip 

 he caught a seven-pound trout, and observed the spawning 

 habits of the fish. A pair of large trout had a nest which he 

 watched for several days, and even approached and stroked 

 them gently without alarming them, so intent upon their 

 business were they. The Rangeleys were then in an almost 

 unknown country, and Mr. Page wrote them up in the daily 

 press and recommended them to his friends, and the public, 

 and kept up his visits from year to year. In 1862 he moved 

 to New York city. 



In 1863 Mr. Page brought down brook trout of five to 

 pounds and presented to William Cullen Bryant, Henry 

 J. Raymond, George Wilkes and Geuio C. Scott. 

 These fish created a sensation among anglers, many of whom 

 denied the genuineness of the species, until Agassiz pro- 

 nounced them to be true brook trout. In 1867 Mr. Page or- 

 ganized the Oquossoc Angling Association, of which he was 

 president for ten years, and which built what was then the 

 finest angling club house in America. In the same year he 

 took 30,000 eggs of the Rangeley trout, packed them in moss 

 and transported them to New Jersey, where he hatched 

 them— the first instance that we know of where eggs of wild 

 trout were taken and transported 500 miles. In 1867 he 

 took the great ten-pound trout — which for upward of ten 

 years was the largest Salmo fontinalis on record, and which 

 ■was stuffed and exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition at 

 Philadelphia, and subsequently at Blackford's annual trout 

 openings. This male trout, which weighed probably twelve 

 pounds when captured (it weighed ten three weeks after), 

 and a female of eight and a quarter were- transported alive 

 from Maine to his ponds in New Jersey. 



Black bass were first introduced into Maine by Mr. Page, 

 who took thirty-one live ones from Newburgh, N. Y., to 

 Winthrop, Me., in 1869. In the same year he carried brook 

 trout eggs to England and France. Those taken to England 

 were hatched at South Kensington by Frank Buckland, and 

 those to Prance at the Jardin desPlanteS) Paris, under the 

 Societe. d'Acclimatation. Thesa are believed to be the first 

 eggs of American trout which crossed the ocean. 



In 1870 Mr. Page was made an honorary member of the 

 Societe dAcclimatation, Paris, and corresponding member 

 of the Deutsche Fischerei Verein. In this year he discov- 

 ered an account of the "Dry Impregnation of Fish Eggs" 

 in a Russian paper, which he caused to be translated and pub- 

 lished in the New York Citizen, this being the first an- 

 nouncement in this country of that process. 



In 1872 he attended the second meeting of the American 

 Fishcultural Association at Albany; and introduced a resolu- 

 tion asking Congress to appropriate money to erect a salmon 

 hatchery on the Pacific coast and to undertake shad hatch- 

 ing on the Atlantic rivers. He was made chairman of the 

 committee to present the same to Congress, and upon doing 

 so asked for an appropriation of $10,000. This was granted 

 and $5, 000 more added ; Prof. S. F. Baird being then appointed 

 commissioner. Commenting on this at the time, the New 

 York Citizen of June 22, 1872, said: "Fish culture is again 

 indebted to Mr. Geo. Shepard Page for an important service. 

 Last year through Mr. Pages' efforts, the great advantages of 

 the dry impregnation of fish eggs became known' in this 

 country, and this year through his exertions an appropriation 

 of $15,000 has been made by Congress for the introduction 

 and restoration of shad and salmon to American waters." 



In 1874 Mr. Page was elected Vice-President of the Ameri- 

 can Fishcultural Association, and built a hatchery on Bema 

 Stream, Oxford county, Me, For the three years previous 

 he had caught and liberated many adult trout in the Rangeley 

 Lakes with their weight and the date attached to them on 

 platinum tags, and in 1873 one was taken by the artist 

 Thomas Moran, which had gained one and three-quarter 

 pounds in two years. 



In 1874 he transported black bass from the Delaware River 

 to the Passaic, in New Jersey, 



In 1877 Mr. Page directed the construction of trout hatch- 

 ing works at the outlet of Rangeley for restocking those 

 waters. 



In 1881 Mr. Page suggested to Prof. Thos. H. Huxley, 

 Inspector of Salmon Fisheries of England, the introduction 

 of the American shad into England. 



On April 1, 1882, he was elected President of the Ameri- 

 can Fishcultural Association. 



The subject of our sketch has been in active business since 

 he was twenty years old, mainly dealing with the chemical 



products of coal tar. His house has extensive chemical 

 works in the United States and in France, with important 

 connections in London. In this department of research he 

 has invented several useful articles, and has taken out some 

 valuable patents. He introduced into this country the 

 method of creosoting f or the- preservation of wood. He is a 

 member of the American Gas Light Association, the Amer- 

 ican Chemical Society, and the American and the New York 

 Pharmaceutical Societies. 



Mr. Page has figured largely in Christian, philanthropical, 

 reform and temperance associations. He is Vice-President of 

 the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers in this 

 city; and was one af the four original founders of the New 

 Jersey State Temperance Society, of which he was president 

 for seven years— a staunch cold water fishculturist! Sunday 

 school work has also claimed a share of his attention and he 

 has been a superintendent and teacher for twenty years, 

 being a member of the Congregational Church. When 

 abroad he represents the Smithsonian Institution, by appoint- 

 ment of Professor Baird. 



Mr. Page is a great advocate of education. He believes 

 that it should be free, non-sectarian and compulsory. When 

 he made his home at Stanley, N. J., in 1867, there were no 

 Schools within two miles of the village, He immediately es- 

 tablished one, employed teachers, and furnished books, furni- 

 ture and other appliances. Later he built a fine school house 

 and expended several thousand dollars for the benefit of the 

 children of the poor during ten years. In 1870 he delivered 

 addresses at Manchester, England, at the invitation of 

 the National Education League, in Free Trade Hall, and 

 elsewhere, in which he described the free school system of 

 the United States, for which he received the thanlu of the 

 League for his assistance in securing the enactment of the 

 present free, unsectarian and compulsory education law. 



We have dwelt largely upon his angling and fishcultural 

 career, but his laurels are not solely those of an angler. 



GEORGE SHEPARD PAGE. 



During a tramp of two hundred miles in October and Novem- 

 ber, 1877, from Rangeley Lakes in Maine, to Lake St. 

 Francis in Canada, and return, he shot a magnificent caribou 

 (American reindeer) which weighed 600 lbs. , and stood nine feet 

 from the ground to the tip of his antlers. The latter were 

 three feet long and had twenty-seven prongs and branches. 

 The head is now a prominent decoration of his hall. A 

 graphic account of this hunt appeared in our columns and 

 was copied into many papers. It was on this trip that at the 

 French Canadian village of St. Vital du Lambton, he met 

 with Urban Therriault, a lineal descendant of the Acadians, 

 Avhose ancestor, warned in season, escaped from Grand Pre 

 in 1755, carrying an infant son in his arms, fleeing through 

 the forest from Nova Scotia to the St. Lawrence. Mr. 

 Page secured the autograph of Mr. Therriault in the pocket 

 copy of Longfellow which he always carries on his angling 

 and hunting tours. On his return he called upon the poet 

 at Cambridge and described the interesting discovery, to the 

 delight of Mr, Longfellow, who added his autograph to 

 that of the Acadian. 



denuded, it will be for many years, if not always, unsightly 

 and unprofitable. Some swamps may be. at great expense, 

 brought into tillage and meadow, but nine times out of ten, 

 when cleared of the lusty growth of woods, they boar noth- 

 ing but wild grass, and the streams that trickled from them 

 all the summer long in their days of wildness, show in 

 August only the parched trail of the spring course. 



Our natives have inherited their ancestors' hatred of trees, 

 which to them were only cumberers of the ground, to be got 

 rid of by the speediest means: and our foreign-born land- 

 holders, being unused to so much woodland, think there can 

 be no end to it, let them slash away as they will. 



Who has not seen in Yankee land, ledges and steep slopes 

 that can bear nothing but wood to any profit, shorn of their 

 last tree, and the margins of streams robbed to the very edge 

 of the willows and water-maples that shaded the water and 

 with their roots protected the banks from washing? Who 

 has not known a little alder swamp, in which when he 

 visited it on the first day of the season each year, he was sure 

 to find a dozen woodcock? The first day comes some year 

 and he seeks it as usual, to find its place only marked by brush 

 heaps, stubs and sedges; and for the brook that wimpled 

 through it in the days of yore, only stagnant pools. The 

 worst of it is, the owners can seldom give any reason for this 

 slaughter but that their poor victims were trees and bushes. 



It is strange that the Yankee, with his proverbial thrifti- 

 ness and forecast, should, when it comes to the proper and 

 sensible management of woodlands, entirely lose these gifts. 

 Why can he not understand that it is more profitable to keep 

 a lean or thin soil that will grow nothing well but wood, 

 growing wood instead of worthless weeds? The Crop is one 

 which is slow in coining to the harvest, but it is a sure one. 

 and is every year becoming a more paying one. Further- 

 more, it breaks the fierceness of the winds, and. keeps the 

 springs from drying up, and is a comfort to the eye, whether, 

 in the greenness of the leaf or the bareness of the bough. 

 Under its protecting arms five and breed the grouse, the 

 quail and the hare, and in its shadowed rills swim the trout. 

 If we would have these we must keep the woods a-growing. 

 No woods, no game; no woods, no water, and no water, 

 no fish. 



A S we have already stated in these colunu; 

 -^*-wood Lake Association proposes to erect in 



SPARE THE TREES. 



TF wc have the most perfect code of game and fish laws 

 -*- which it is possible to devise, and have them ever so 

 thoroughly enforced, what will they avail if there is no cover 

 for game nor water for fish? All the protection that the law 

 can give will not prevent the game naturally belonging to a 

 wooded country from leaving it when it is deforesl ed, nor 

 keep fish in streams that have shrunk to a quarter of their 

 ordinary volume before midsummer. The streams of such a 

 country will thus shrink when the mouutains, where the snows 

 lie latest and the feeding springs are, and the Swamps, which 

 dole out their slow but steady tribute, are. bereft of shade. 



Here is a field for missionary work, and by such work 

 alone can this evil of tree-murder be checked. No law can 

 be enacted that will oblige landowners to spare the trees 

 which shade their ledges and swamps, but it is possible that 

 they can be made to see that it is to their interest to do so. 

 The thin soil of a rocky hill, when deprived of its shelter of 

 branches, will be burned by the summer sun out. of all power 

 to help the germination of any worthy seed, or to nurture so 

 noble a plant as a tree through the tender days of its infancy. 

 But it supports only useless weeds and brambles. Once so 



TIW HERBERT MONUMENT. 



ins, the Green- 

 proposes to erect in the Warwick 

 Woodlands a monument to William Henry Herbert, best 

 known to sportsmen as '. 'Frank Forester." To-day we print 

 a letter from the Secretary of the Greenwood Lake Associa- 

 tion, in which he invites other societies to join with his own 

 in the project. 



In connection with this letter of Mr. McDowell is published 

 an account of a former Herbert memorial scheme, under- 

 taken six years ago, at which time the "Frank Forester 

 Memorial Association" was formed. The movement of 

 1875-76 was a success and a failure, just how much of each 

 may be learned from the history as told in the account re- 

 ferred to. 



It was certainly successful in securing the result for which 

 it was primarily formed. Although the actual work of 

 placing a stone over Herbert's grave was performed by others. 

 none the less must the credit for the deed rightly be accorded 

 to the members of the "Frank Forester Memorial Associa- 

 tion," for it was they who impelled the citizens of Newark 

 to the action taken in the matter. 



The results of the subsequent efforts of the association 

 show that it made a mistake when it adopted the ambitious 

 scheme of a costly monument to be erected in Central Park. 

 To touch the sympathies of men with the story -of Herbert's 

 unmarked grave, and to enlist their ready aid in making 

 reparation for the negligence of family and friends, was an 

 easy task. The response was natural and immediate. But 

 the public was not willing to put thousands of dollars into a 

 monument, the cost, character and purpose of which were to 

 it matters of mystery. Indeed, the Memorial Association it- 

 self appears to have had no very definite conception of what 

 it w T anted to do, as witness the vague and glittering terms of 

 its appeal. This circular failed to have the desired effect, 

 even though bearing the names of many of the most promi- 

 nent sportsmen of the day. Nor, while the funds already in 

 the treasury of the association were enough to have elected 

 the headstone "neither costly nor imposing," did they go far, 

 when devoted by the committee to the endeavor to collect 

 the thousands more needed for the "memorial work of art, 

 worthy the genius of this Centennial year of American Inde- 

 pendence." 



The plain facts appear to have been that in 1875 and '76 

 the regard entertained by the public for William Henry Her- 

 bert was sufficiently strong to put a headstone over his grave ; 

 it was not strong enough to build for him a costly monument 

 of granite and bronze. 



Long Island Shooting. — The season just closing has been 

 one of the best in many years for wild fowl shooting in the 

 Great South Bay. The shooting is about over, we under- 

 stand. We hope that the day is not far distant when the 

 birds may be allowed to make their spring journey without 

 disturbance. It is pleasant to notice that the remarks against 

 spring shooting, which we recently expressed, appear to have 

 the hearty concurrence and support of many of our older and 

 wiser heads. If sportsmen do not exercise some self-control 

 they will suffer in the future for their greediness. 



