20 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



oyster culture are rapidly becoming relatively smaller factors in the 

 business, while others, which have sought to encourage the occupation 

 of barren bottoms by citizens in severalty for purposes of o3 r ster 

 planting, are steadily gaining, with resultant profit to both the state 

 and the citizens. 



Owing to divergent conditions the same laws and methods are not 

 strictly applicable to all parts of the coast and in each case the work 

 and recommendations of the Bureau are aimed to supply the local 

 requirements, both as to the means of conservation of the natural beds 

 held by the state as a common possession of the people and the devel- 

 opment of oyster culture under private ownership. The investiga- 

 tions of the government have frequently served as the scientific basis 

 for new laws. In 1898 the Bureau published a report on the oyster 

 beds of Louisiana which contained a number of recommendations look- 

 ing to the improvement of the methods of the oyster industry and the 

 laws controlling it. After protracted agitation, the legislature in 

 1904 passed a law embodying all of the recommendations, with one 

 minor exception, and ample machinery has been provided for the 

 enforcement of the act, the beneficial effects of which are reported to 

 be already apparent and constantly becoming more marked. A sim- 

 ilar result in North Carolina has followed the publication of a report 

 on experiments in oyster culture conducted jointly by this Bureau 

 and the State Natural History Survey. Sufficient time has not yet 

 elapsed to determine the practical effects of the new order; but it can 

 hardty fail to be beneficial. New oyster legislation is now being advo- 

 cated for Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, and the work of 

 the Bureau has been useful in furnishing information and advice. 



Investigations in Maine. — Although there is indubitable evidence 

 that oysters at one time occurred on the coast of Maine in considerable 

 numbers, they were practically extinct at the time of the first white set- 

 tlements except in the Sheepscot River and one or two minor localities. 

 In the Sheepscot there were scattering large oysters with few if any small 

 ones until about 1898, when spat and } 7 oung were noticed on the timbers 

 of a new dam at Alna. During the following year conditions for 

 breeding and spat production seem to have been favorable, and in July, 

 1904, the rocks and gravel in the river for several miles above the dam 

 were found to be well covered with an apparently vigorous } 7 oung growth. 

 With the knowledge of the existence of these volunteer o} r sters several 

 persons have been encouraged to undertake experiments in oyster cul- 

 ture on a small scale, but though the seed oysters have lived, fattened, 

 and in one case, at least, produced ripe eggs, none of these small artifi- 

 cial deposits has made any progress toward reproducing. 



In response to the solicitations of citizens of Maine, an assistant of 

 the Bureau was sent to the state in July, 1904, to determine the 



