340 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
lias a hearty and genial manner, and a frank and honest nature looks out of eyes that 
show that no shallow mind lies behind them. Every fisli-culturist knows whom I 
mean. I had previously visited Seth Green at his home in Caledonia, but it was not 
till I met and assisted him at Holyoke, in 1867, that his strong personality impressed, 
itself on me. He was there conducting his first experiments in hatching shad. He 
was entirely alone when 1 visited him, and his first attempts at hatching shad had 
just ended in signal failure. The peculiar character of the eggs and the peculiar 
treatment required for them had baffled for a time even his keen-sighted genius, and 
he had in despair almost decided to give it up and return home. The fishermen he 
had hired to help him were laughing at him for what they called his “ foolishness.” 
But, although alone and depressed in spirits, and with no one to offer a word of 
encouragement, Seth Green kept on and, with dogged persistence and determination, 
fought and overcame one difficulty after another, as they met him, until at last he was 
rewarded, as the world knows, with overwhelming success. Perhaps I may be allowed 
to add that a warm friendship sprang up about this time between Seth Green and the 
writer, which continued to the day of the former’s death. 
It was a pleasant thing to see the change in Green’s spirits that came with his 
first success in hatching shad. It seemed a little thing — nothing but some little deli- 
cate living embryos appearing in the frail eggs that he was working over. Little it 
was, but it was the herald of almost illimitable possibilities, which perhaps the man 
himself did not fully realize. But however that may be, it restored his spirits and 
made him almost instantly a changed man. 
The writer once asked Gen. Phil. Sheridan what was the most thrilling moment of 
his career during the war of the rebellion. General Sheridan answered laconically, 
“When the tide turned at the battle of Winchester.” I think that perhaps Seth 
Green’s feelings at Holyoke, when his first shad eggs showed signs of life, might have 
been somewhat similar. He was attempting what no one else had ever thought of 
accomplishing and vast results were depending on his efforts. The eyes of all the 
fish-cultural world were on him. Thus far he had failed. He was for the time being 
defeated. Then the tide suddenly turned, and almost literally in a moment the whole 
thing was changed and he was victorious in a great battle, the far-reaching results of 
which will doubtless survive even the great nation that Sheridan fought for. 
Green’s strong traits of character were not the only things about him that called 
attention to the mau, for united with these were a sound judgment and many rare 
gifts of genius. He had the happy faculty of seeing and fixing his mind on the one 
essential point to be attained, to the exclusion of everything else, and he had the fine 
discrimination which enables one to retain all the means necessary to accomplish his 
object and to eliminate all others. This enabled him to reduce his inventions and 
methods to the utmost simplicity without impairing their efficiency — the sure sign of 
genius. Green’s famous shad-hatching box, tliaQ which nothing more simple and 
effective has ever been invented for the hatching of fish, is a good illustration of this 
genius, and his world renowned skill at fly-casting, rifle shooting, and .fish-catching 
are only further illustrations of the same thing. I regret that time and space forbid 
my giving anything more than this very imperfect sketch of this remarkable man, 
but I must hasten on. 
The other figure which stands out prominently in my memory, as I recall the 
early days of American fish-culture, is that of one who has been called a plain man. 
He was a plain man, indeed, but one who was made after nature’s largest pattern of 
