THE OYSTER EISHERIES LAWS. 63 



oyster may be continued, it will be necessary to make certain 

 reserves to secure the spatting of oysters cluriDg the season. 

 It is necessary to produce the Bill at the present time in 

 order that another season may not be lost, to the great detri- 

 ment of the whole trade in oysters, and to the discomfort of 

 many who are accustomed to indulge in this delicious mollusc. 

 These are the main provisions of the Bill, and without any 

 reference to what may be termed the secondary provisions." 

 This Bill, with a few unimportant modifications, became 

 law, and, excepting a subsequent amendment, by which the 

 royalty it imposed on oysters gathered from the beds and 

 foreshores became abolished, it remains the law by which 

 those fisheries are still regulated. A more lengthened experi- 

 ence of the working capabilities of this enactment has forced 

 the unwelcome conclusion that even it does not contain suffi- 

 ciently restrictive provisions to further the development of the 

 large possibilities of these fisheries. It certainly checked for a 

 time the wholesale denudation of the oyster deposits, which 

 were being carried on by licensed dredgers, who worked them 

 according to their own sweet will, in total disregard of any 

 obligation to assist in maintaining a continuity of supply; 

 but in its passage through Parliament some of its more 

 important sections were so marred by unfortunate amend- 

 ments, which seem to have passed only because the effect of 

 them could not be apprehended, that the resulting consequences 

 were to reduce the protective value of the measure in a very 

 material degree. One instance may be given : The 9th 

 section of that Act makes it penal to take oysters without 

 authority from a reserve or a leased area, but it omits the 

 protection of oysters on the extensive shore areas which are 

 not under lease at all. The result has been that unprincipled 

 persons have taken small leases of one or two hundred yards 

 of shore for the purpose of artificial culture, and these have 

 not only failed in j^erforming the obligations of their leases, 

 but, availing of the laxity of the terms in which this 9th 

 section is couched, proceeded to rob the adjacent unleased 

 foreshores of every shell they contained ; as this practice has 

 been followed in almost every water, the exhaustion of the 

 fisheries need not be regarded with surprise ; and the aboli- 

 tion of the royalty on oysters, which was effected to cure 

 what was described as the anomaly of charging a royalty on 

 our own oysters, while admitting free of duty oysters from 

 other countries, offered an additional facility to these thieves, 



