Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners 31 



limited for them to be of much practical, general advantage for the pur- 

 poses of such a law as the one under discussion; but there are thou- 

 sands of acres of hard and shifting sands where oysters not only are 

 not found, but where it would be folly to plant them; and these lat- 

 ter it can not be supposed that the State intended to offer to give away, 

 for the simple reason that the State could not help knowing that 

 nobody would have them. 



Upon the other hand there are large and numerous tracts where 

 oysters of natural growth may be found in moderate numbers, but not 

 in quantities sufficient to make it profitable to catch them; and yet 

 where oysters may be successfully planted and propagated. In my 

 opinion these can not be called natural bars or beds of oysters, within 

 the meaning of the Act of Assembly, and it is just such lands as these 

 that the State meant to allow to be taken up under the provisions of 

 the above-mentioned section of the Act. 



But there is still another class of lands where oysters grow naturally 

 and in large quantities and to which the public are now and have been 

 for many years in the habit of resorting with a view to earning a live- 

 lihood by catching this natural growth; and, here', I think, is the true 

 test of the whole question. Land cannot be said to be a natural oyster 

 bar or bed merely because oysters are scattered here and there upon 

 it, and because if planted they will readily live and thrive there; but 

 whenever the natural growth is so thick and abundant that the public 

 resort to it for a livelihood, it is a natural oyster bar or bed and comes 

 within the above-quoted restriction in the law, and cannot be located 

 or appropriated by any individual." 



