Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 35 



during all or a part of the year, such as the head waters of Chester 

 river and its tributaries and the Chesapeake bay, some oyster 

 grounds were surveyed and examined which failed to come up to 

 the adopted standard of a natural oyster bar and were not reserved 

 to the public oyster fishery. 



The exhausted and barren bottoms located in parts of Chester 

 river and its tributaries are valuable for growing and fattening a 

 limited quantity of oysters; the quantity they will support per acre 

 depending upon the area of productive oyster grounds in their im- 

 mediate vicinity and depending also upon the rate with which the 

 water flows over them. If too many oysters are planted on these 

 bottoms none will fatten and many will die. 



The depleted and barren bottoms located in the part of the bay 

 adjacent to Kent County will become of very great value for oyster 

 culture when the planting industry in the State shall have grown 

 sufficiently to create a demand for large quantities of seed oysters, 

 for there is every reason to believe that a good catch of spat will 

 be the usual result of exposing cultch during the late summer season 

 in this section. 



In determining the status of the oyster grounds surveyed in Kent 

 County, a price of sixty cents per bushel was adopted as a maxi- 

 mum value for the oysters produced. The table by which determi- 

 nations were made is printed on page 14. 



Four applications were received by the Commission in 1906 from 

 persons desiring to continue to hold the oyster lots under the present 

 law which they had leased in Kent County under former law, but 

 in one case only has a lease been perfected. 



CHESTER RIVER. 



(Shown on charts of natural oyster bars Nos. 29 and 30.) 



Natural oyster bars are found in Chester river proper, from the 

 mouth of the river to a point about five miles below Chestertown. 

 The mouth of the river is considered by the Commission to be 

 marked by a line about three and one-half miles in length, con- 

 necting the northernmost point on Kent island with the nearest 

 point on Wickes beach. The oyster bars in the half of the river 

 lying within th- territorial limits of Kent County (the part north 

 of the line marking the mid-river channel) are 2j in number and 



