758 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



recommend that any fishery officer who shall receive a 

 license fee from an oyster fisherman without at the same 

 time delivering to him his license, shall forfeit his bond to 

 the State, and shall be removed from his position, and 

 shall not again be employed upon the fishery force. 



ON THE STATE REVENUE FROM THE OYSTER INDUSTRY. 



As long as our present policy of raising revenue by 

 licenses is adhered to, we cannot expect any very great 

 increase, and the depletion of the beds must, in any case, 

 affect the income of the State. 



certain changes should be made in our present 

 policy. 



As there are six or seven hundred dredging vessels, all 

 of them very much alike in appearance, the only way for 

 the officers to determine whether dredging boats have 

 complied with the license law is to observe whether they 

 display license numbers, and it is assumed that any boat 

 which is numbered is also properly licensed. 



As a duplicate number can be made by anyone with a 

 paint brush and a little black paint, there must be a strong 

 temptation to evade the law by counterfeiting the numbers, 

 or by using old ones, after the license has expired. 



We therefore recommend that each officer of the 

 fishery force be required to keep a daily record of the 

 numbers of all dredging boats in his district, and of the 

 beds upon which they are working, and to transmit a copy 

 of this record, once a week, to the Oyster Commissioners, 

 who shall be required to enter, in a book kept for that 

 purpose, after the number of each dredging boat, the place 

 where it has been seen on each day. Whenever this 

 record shall show that the same number has been seen in 

 one day at two distant points, the commander of the fishery 



