Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 1 1 



"What then is a natural bar or bed of oysters? It would be a palpable 

 absurdity for the State to attempt to promote the propagation and growth of 

 oysters and to encourage its citizens, by grant of land, to engage in their culture, 

 if the lands authorized to be taken up were only those upon which oysters do 

 not and cannot be made to grow. That there may be lands covered by water in 

 the State where no oysters can be found, but where, if planted, they could be 

 cultivated successfully, may be possible, but, if so, I imagine that their extent 

 must be too limited for them to be of much practical, general advantage for the 

 purposes of such a law as the one under discussion ; but there are thousands 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 latter 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 suffi- 

 cient to make it profitable to catch them ; and yet where oysters may be success- 

 fully 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 livelihood 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 scat- 

 tered 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." 



APPLICATION OF DEFINITION. 



Before this definition may be of use in determining, accurately 

 and scientifically, the status of an oyster ground, its central idea, 

 "livelihood," must be expanded into accurately determinable factors 

 and these factors must be combined into a practical scheme for in- 

 vestigating the condition of the grounds under consideration. 



Stated briefly, a livelihood is represented by a sum of money ob- 

 tained from the sale, at a fixed price, of a certain quantity of oys- 

 ters gathered in a given time from an allotted area of ground. 



Knowing the value of these factors it becomes possible to calcu- 

 late the number of oysters an oyster ground must produce per acre 

 or per square yard in order that oystermen may secure a liveliho d 

 by working upon it. 



The factors into which the Commission resolved the livelihood 

 problem; the value assigned to each factor and an outline of the 

 scheme devised for use in examining oyster ground and applying the 

 definition to the grounds examined, are given below. 



