Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 99 



A study of the conditions under which thriving industries 111 

 oyster culture have been established in other Atlantic Coast States, 

 where natural conditions are less favorable to the production of 

 oysters than in Maryland, also shows that Maryland has stopped 

 short of offering sufficient inducements to her citizens to lease the 

 available oyster lands and plant and cultivare oysters upon them. 

 Lessees have not been assured that success in Juch an enterprise 

 will depend solely upon their having successfully overcome the 

 natural difficulties and run the ordinary risks inherent in all oyster 

 planting operations. 



It is the hope and belief of the advocates of oyster culture for 

 Maryland that the selected product from cultivated grounds will 

 supplement and give greater value to, and greater demand for, the 

 "run-of-the-rock" product which is put upon the market from the 

 natural oyster beds and, until the proposed scheme of oyster cul- 

 ture has been given a fair trial, the State should see that it is not 

 abandoned. 



It is folly to expect and wrong to urge our citizens to lease the 

 waste oyster bottoms and attempt to develop them until the law is 

 so amended as to provide the rights and privileges demonstrated to 

 be, and universally accepted to be, essential to success in oyster 

 culture and, to the end that the restrictions imposed upon oyster 

 planters in their operations upon bottoms leased from the State for 

 the purposes of oyster culture may be as few and as limited as is 

 consistent with the rights pertaining to the public oyster fishery, the 

 Board of Shell Fish Commissioners therefore recommends the fol- 

 lowing amendments, which it considers to be of fundamental im- 

 portance to oyster planters. 



AMENDMENTS OF FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE TO 

 OYSTER PLANTERS. 



1. Providing for Increase in Area of Lots which may be leased. 

 It is essential that the area which may be leased by the State to 

 an individual for the purposes of oyster culture be increased to not 

 less than thirty acres, if situated in sections where the method of 

 taking oysters from the natural oyster bars is limited to tonging, 

 and to not less than five hundred acres when situated in sections 

 where oysters may be taken from the natural bars with dredges or 



