Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest >nd Stream Publishing Co. 
*%"Jmo"xh\', ?r- ' } NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1900. 1 no. si bhoIbw^,'new yor. 
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f rea matber. 
Freu Mather died at Cedar Island Lodge, on the Brule 
River, near Lake Nebagomain, Wis., on Wednesday of 
last week, February 14th. The sense of bereavement 
which the intelligence of his death has brought to those 
who knew him best will be shared by the wider circle, the 
uiniumbered host, of those to whom he had endeared 
liimself by the charm of his writings and the attractive 
personality which was revealed in those writings. 
His illness was short, so brief, indeed,, that the letter 
advising of its serious nature was not received until 
after the telegram announcing its fatal termination, and 
the dispatch came almost at the same time with a bundle 
of manuscript fresh from his pen for the Forest and 
Stream. And in that manuscript, pathetically enough, 
was made the promise to write at some future time "of 
this Wisconsin Brule, which has flowed past my door , for 
many months," the writer all unsuspecting and with no 
forboding of his near approach to that great river which 
men call death. 
Mr. Mather was born in Greenbush, then a small vil- 
lage, on the Hudson River opposite, Albany, N. Y., 
.\ugust 2d, 1833. He was endowed with a full measure of 
a healthy-minded country boy's interest in the birds and 
beasts and fishes and the ways of nature, and his bent 
in this direction was encouraged and fixed for life by com- 
panions whose tastes were congenial with his own. His 
first visit to the West was in 1849, when he went to 
Michigan and became acquainted with the wild turkey, a 
game bird then not rare in the Michigan wilderness. 
Later, come to man's estate, we find him mining in Wis- 
consin, trapping in the Bad Ax country, now Vernon 
county, Minnesota, and with a surveying party in Crow 
Wing county, Minnesota. 
Mr. Mather enlisted in the New York Volunteers as an 
orderly sergeant of the Seventh Artillery. It is told of 
him, by a friend who served in the same regiment, that 
Ijcing without the slightest knowledge of soldiering, and 
finding that he had to drill his company, he studied by 
night to conceal his ignorance, and next day exercised 
the men in what he had learned, and before six months 
had the reputation of being the best drill master in the 
regiment. When a vacant lieutenancy occurred the 
colonel ordered an examination of the sergeants for 
promotion, and Mather got the prize. He was again 
promoted before his command left the defenses of Wash- 
ington for the front in 1864. At Spotsylvania three cap- 
tains of the Seventh were killed, and Col. Morris named 
Lieut. Mather for one vacancy "for gallant and meritori- 
ous conduct." At Cold Harbor, Col. Morris was killed, 
and Lieut.-Col. Hastings named Mather for major for 
capturing a battery and turning the guns upon the enemy. 
These commissions never reached him, because he was 
surroimded and captured while charging the works at 
Petersburg, Va., a few days later, while in command of 
the color company of the regiment. Although his com- 
mand was surrounded, he personally saved the colors by 
burying them, and they were recovered after dark. He 
remained in the field under fire after burying the colors 
trying to bury his sword, but was driven in at the point 
of the bayonet, sword in hand. After twenty-five years 
the sword was returned to him, and he wore it on parades. 
He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and 
of the Loyal Legion. 
Mr. Mather began fishculture in 1868, when the in- 
dustry was still in its infancy, and everything connected 
with it was for the most part experimental. He bought 
a farm near Honeoye Falls^ Monroe county, Y.. and 
began the artificial culture of trout. The sale of eggs and 
fry was at that time the most profitable part of trout 
farming, and Mr. Mather, with A. S. Collins and Dr, 
J. H. Slack, of New Jersey, called a meeting to agree on 
a scale of prices. This meeting Avas held in New York in 
1870, and a second one met in Albany in 1871, when the 
x'Vmerican Fishculturists' Association was formed with 
some twenty members. The new association discussed 
the desirability of action by the general Government, and 
appointed George Shepherd Page as a committee of one to 
go to Washington and lay the matter before Congress. 
Out of this action grew the establishment of the United 
States Fish Commission, to which Prof. Spencer F. 
Baird was appointed in 1871. Prof. Baird employed Mr. 
Mather in shad hatching on the Potomac and Hudson 
rivers, and in 1874 sent him to Germany with 100,000 
shad eggs. 
In 187s, with Charles F. Bell, he invented the Bell and 
Mather cone for hatching shad, out of which grew the 
Chase jar and the McDonald jar. In 1877 Prof. Baird 
appointed him to the charge of foreign exchanges of eggs 
and fish. There were then constant exchanges with Ger- 
many, and shipments of eggs of trout, quinnat salmon 
and lake whitefish to England, France and Holland. In 
1877 and 1878 Mr. Mather accompanied shipments to Ger- 
many. He devised the first refrigerating box for ship- 
ping salmon eggs to Europe, and succeeded in taking 100,- 
000 quinnat salmon eggs safely to Germany, in recognition 
of which achievement he received the thanks of the 
Deutsche Fischerei Verein, a silver medal from the So- 
ciete d' Acclimation of Paris, and a handsome testimonial 
from the King of Holland, sent through the inspector of 
fisheries. Again in 1880 for his invention of a way of 
packing salmon eggs for export to Europe he received a 
bronze medal at the World's Fishery Exposition in Berlin 
in 1880. At Berlin he had charge of the American exhibit 
of angling and fishcultural apparatus. 
Returning to this country he was entrusted by Mr. 
Eugene G. Blackford, one of the Fish Commissioners of 
New York, with the mission of selecting a site on Long 
Island for a State fish hatchery, and upon his recom- 
mendation the Cold Spring Harbor hatchery was estab- 
lished, and he was put in charge of it. This position was 
held by him until 1895. Here, in addition to his other 
practical services to fishculture, he learned how to hatch 
over 70 per cent, of the adhesive eggs of the smelt; and 
discovered that the lobster is a biennial spawner. Last 
year Mr. Mather went to the Wisconsin Brule to assume 
direction of the extensive trout breeding enterprise there 
established of Mr. Henry C. Pierce, of St. Louis. Always 
a valued writer on fishcultural topics, he had completed 
shortly before his death the task of seeing through the 
press a new book on "Modern Fishculture in Fresh and 
Salt Water." This is but a brief summary of the life 
work of one who in his chosen field has contributed no 
small measure of benefit to his age. In the history of fish- 
culture the name of Fred Mather must always hold high 
place, and his achievements must be accorded recognition, 
Mr. Mather was among the earliest writers for Forest 
AND Stream ; in its first volumes he told of his experiences 
in fishculture ; and from that time forth he was one of the 
journal's contributors, whose names are household words 
with its readers everywhere. Upon his return from the 
Berlin Fishery Exposition, he assumed the conduct of the 
angling columns, and held this post until his work at 
Cold Spring Harbor exacted all his attention. He was one 
of the organizers of the Rod and Reel Association, and 
one of the chief promoters of the fly-casting tournaments 
held under its direction. 
As a writer he was at his best in the series of papers 
"Men I Have Fished With." Of these companions of 
his youth and maturity he wrote with loving pen. The 
wealth of material and the way in which it was used sur- 
prised and gratified his friends. It was perceived that 
this man who had been all his life studying the fishes 
and the birds and the animals, had been studying men too ; 
if he knew nature he also knew human nature. He 
showed a wonderful insight into the characters of his 
fellows. The chapters are marked throughout by that 
sympathetic recognition which sees the best in one's 
companions; the sketches are surcharged with the phil- 
osophy of life; they are filled with humor — the kindliest of 
humor it need not be said; and abound in the homely 
everyday practical wisdom which appeals to us all, and in 
which we may all have share. There is never any strain- 
ing after effect, nor anything of affectation. The charm 
is in the simplicity, the directness, the unaffected manner, 
and the feeling, which we gain as we read, that we have 
here something which is genuine and true. Into these 
chapters, thus written in commemoration of the friends of 
his days afield, the writer must of necessity have put 
much of his own personality; and as has been said, it was 
this personality as revealed in his writings that made for 
Fred Mather a place in the affections of his readers. 
THE NEW YORK FISH COMMISSION. 
When the fish commissions of the various States were 
first established, they were for the most part made up of 
men who, of course, did not know much about fishculture 
— for the art was then in a rudimentary stage and no one 
knew very much about it — but were solid citizens who 
were thought to be so public spirited that the enterprise 
of restocking the waters might safely be entrusted to 
their hands. In this way it came about that the office 
of fish commissioner was one to which honor and public 
esteem were attached, but which was not necessarily of 
very decided practical benefit to the people. Afterward, as 
the fishculturists became educated and fishculture passed 
from an experitnental stage to an art of known principles 
and approved practices, wherein success depended upon 
the information and experience possessed by thosC; in 
charge, the old notion of a commissionership as an 
honorary office still persisted. When New York estab- 
lished a commission as a salaried board and the commis- 
sioners were given some political influence through their 
appointments, the office took on a political character, and 
men were appointed to it largely out of political con- 
sideration. For instance, Mr. Barnet H. Davis was 
made president of the Commission purely for the sake pf 
giving him the salary attached to the office and for what- 
ever political control he might exercise. This is as good 
an instance as occurs to us of an utterly incompetent in- 
dividual being given an important place in fishculture as a 
bestowal of "something just as good" in place of another 
office upon which his ambition had been fixed. 
It is reported that Governor Roosevelt's desire is to 
substitute for the present Commission of five members, 
which has charge of the fisheries, game and forests, three 
separate and distinct single-headed commissions. 
This is a plan concerning the wisdom of which there 
can be no two opinions. As has already been urged in 
these columns, there is no more reason for combining 
in a joint commission these diverse interests than for 
uniting under one board of control the banking, the ex- 
cise and the public works. Each department should be 
intrusted to a commissioner fitted by education, character 
and ability to conduct it; and he should do his work 
unhampered by connection with other departments. 
It can not be insisted upon too strongly that the head 
of each commission should be a practical man in his 
field, one who can initiate and execute for himself. The 
head of the forestry department should be a practical 
forester, one who has been educated as a forester, who 
knows the subject thoroughly, and can perform his 
duties without going to others for advice. The fish 
commissioner should be one who is a practical fishcul- 
turist, who can tell for himself what fish are suited for 
what waters, and who shall not be compelled to piece out 
his ignorance by blustering, blundering, bungling pre- 
tense, or by recourse to some one else who does know 
something. What is needed is ability at firstrhand. 
Nor is there any reason whatever why the game and 
fish protecter service should not he entrusted to one re- 
sponsible head, and be not subject to consultation with 
a board, or to direction by a board. He should have 
personally the appointment of his deputies throughout 
the State, just as the commissioner of excise appoints his 
deputies; for the performance of their duty they should 
be responsible to him and to him alone, and in turn he 
should be held responsible for them and for the way in 
which they do their work or fail to do if. ■ Until the State 
of New York shall have for thp great interests involved 
in these several resources, the guidance, control and ad- 
ministration of competent single-headed commissions, it 
will simply be following on the blundering methods 
which have been imposed upon it as an outgrowth of the 
olden time honorary fish commission system. 
