272 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



such a small quantity of meat to the bushel that, under the present low prices of 

 canned oysters it will not pay to procure them from distant points for the purpose. 



What the success of oyster-culture on an extensive scale might have been in 

 Chatham County under more propitious circumstances, and may yet become if suit- 

 able grounds can be secured, has been foreshadowed by the fact that one of the most 

 extensive and justly renowned packing companies of the United States paid the 

 Oemler Oyster Company, in Baltimore, an extra price for the oysters we were able to 

 put up of our own cultivation, with the privilege of using their own labels. 



In his "general conclusions" Ensign Drake, with the lights then before him, 

 properly and wisely observed: 



As a means of rapidly depleting the natural beds no more effective method could be instituted 

 than the establishment of factories for the canning of oysters. These in the end will be of great ben- 

 efit to the State, because the sooner the natural beds are depleted the sooner will the citizens engage 

 in private cultivation and enact laws that will give inducement to capital. 



At that time, however, neither lienor anybody else had any prevision that a very 

 large portion of the area held fit for oyster culture would be demonstrated to be useless 

 for the purpose, and that capital would be wasted in its attempted development. 



The aggregate area taken up in Chatham, Glynn, and Camden counties under the 

 last two laws is 8,228 acres; hence $8,228 have gone into the school fund and 8,228 

 acres of previously useless territory have been entered for taxation. Of the 5 acre 

 leases in Chatham County, 67 are held by white and 44 by colored people, aggregating 

 555 acres. Under the wonderful fecundity of the oyster and the usual certainty of 

 an annual set, this territory could, under favorable circumstances, doubtless be made 

 exceedingly productive. 



While the present acreage fit for oyster-culture in the waters of Georgia is very 

 small in extent, that of the marsh lands, which may be readily excavated for pond cult- 

 ure, is very great. At a rough estimate, there are 35,000 acres in Chatham County, 

 belonging, under an old grant of the State, to the two educational institutions — the 

 Chatham Academy and the Union Society, with its orphan asylum at Bethesda, 

 founded by John Wesley. The demand having already exceeded the supply before 

 the exhaustion of the natural beds had reached its present state, the cultivation of 

 oysters being only successful in shallow water and the quality of such stock being 

 of superior grade, the future hope of any extensive oyster-culture in Georgia seems to 

 lie in these marsh lands. 



