The Gulf of Mexico 253 



reefs, and lie in very shallow water. Beneath them is a 

 deposit of soft, deep mud that characterizes the Gulf 

 everywhere. The most important growth is in Apalachi- 

 cola Bay, but it is almost everywhere covered by mussels. 



The state of Florida created a Fish Commission in 

 1889. It formerly paid the president of this commis- 

 sion a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a year. He 

 has now been made " Honorary President," without re- 

 muneration. The secretary of the commission has never 

 received a salary. Out of pure loyalty to the common- 

 wealth, entirely without appropriations, with almost no 

 authority, advancing the interests of the fisheries to the 

 best of their ability from their private means, receiving 

 no indirect benefit, subject to criticism, and doing a large 

 amount of valuable work, this commission has served 

 for many years. 



There are oyster laws in Florida, but none are ob- 

 served, except that the cull law, requiring shells and 

 small oysters to be replaced on the beds from which they 

 are taken, has been enforced in Apalachicola Bay — at the 

 expense of local dealers, and not by the state. A very 

 few oysters are steamed and canned. 



Undoubtedly there are extensive tracts on the Gulf 

 coast of Florida that might supply a large market with 

 cultivated oysters. An estimate based on a U. S. Fish 

 Commission oyster survey places the number of acres 

 suitable for oyster culture in Apalachicola Bay alone at 

 6,800. A great fear that assails Florida as well as other 

 states, is that these oyster bottoms may sometime fall 

 into the hands of some monstrous corporation. For sev- 

 eral reasons, this will not be realized. Among them are 

 the facts that capital will not be invested while political 

 conditions remain as they are on the Florida shores, and 



