THE OYSTER. iSl 



of the State furnished from his " emergency fund ' ' a 

 small sum for the purchase of a few pieces of simple 

 apparatus. The Trustees of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity allowed me to devote to the work two years, 

 during which they paid me for my service to them, 

 and they also furnished aid in other ways, so that the 

 results of our examination of the beds were, in great 

 part, a gift from the University to the State. 



With such scanty means as we could command we 

 organized a plan of work, and soon accumulated 

 enough data to prove that our oyster policy is destruc- 

 tive and sure to result, ultimately, in ruin to the indus- 

 try. Our first step was to try to ascertain the condi- 

 tion of the beds by personal examination, but we found 

 that the absence of any exact data as to their condition 

 in past years rendered any inference from our observa- 

 tions very difficult. 



In a small part of the bay exact data were on record. 

 The beds of Tangier Sound were very carefully sur- 

 veyed in 1878 and 1879 by Lieutenant Francis Wins- 

 low, U. S. N., acting under the direction of the 

 Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. 

 His published report is one of the most important 

 documents ever printed on the subject, and while 

 it covers only a small part of the waters of Mary- 

 land, it gives a very exhaustive account of all the 

 oyster-beds of the region examined, with their areas, 

 location, boundaries, position, general character, the 

 number of oysters to the square yard, the ratios be- 

 tween oysters of different ages, etc., so that we were 



