THE OYSTER INDUSTRY. 529 



is generally condemned, and with wisdom. Under this arrangement, however, a large part of 

 the plantation must lie idle every alternate year, and in view of this many of the Delaware 

 men complain with much reason that the limit of 15 acres is too small. 



The harvesting of the marketable crop begins iu September. It is calculated (and generally 

 realized) that as much by measure shall be taken up each year as Las been put down at present 

 about 300,000 bushels. By count, however, there will not be more than half as many, showing 

 that half of the young perish. The profit, then, is almost wholly on the growth; but as, after 

 from eighteen months to two years' waiting, the stock which cost put down, say. 25 cents, sells, 

 bushel for bushel, at from 75 cents to $1.25, the return is a very fair one. 



In the process of taking up a bed of oysters here each dredgeful is culled immediately on 

 board, and all the " trash," that is, undersized oysters, shells and refuse, is saved, and at the end 

 of the dredging is taken to the "idle-ground," where a field of seed is growing, and emptied upon it. 

 Much of this trash is alive and will mature. When, six months (or perhaps not until eighteen 

 months) later, this idle-ground is overhauled and culled out for market, it will be found to have 

 been considerably reinforced by the " trash." A second most excellent effect of this system is that 

 it thoroughly cleans the ground from which the season's salable crop is gathered. 



The capital which carries on the oystering iu the Delaware waters is almost wholly derived 

 from Philadelphia, and most of the men employed belong there. 



PLANTING ON EASTERN SHORE OP DELAWARE BAY. The New Jersey shore of the bay is bor- 

 dered by extensive marshes, containing innumerable creeks, and many open places called "ponds." 

 Throughout these creeks ;iud ponds, in tide-ways and alongthe edges of the sedge-plats and islands, 

 oysters have always grown iu great profusion. In addition to this the bay and the Delaware River, 

 from Cape May beach clear up to and a little above Cohansey Point, at the southern end of Salem 

 County, a distance of not less than 50 miles, are everywhere furnished with oyster-beds, not con- 

 fined to the shallow waters near shore, or to the sedge-plats, but apparently scattered over the 

 whole bottom of the bay. Even the ship-channel, 90 fathoms deep, contains them. 



The center of the present great planting industries on the New Jersey shore is at Maurice 

 Cove. So important had the oyster fisheries in this region become thirty years ago, that they 

 were the subject of much special legislation, which appears iu the revised statutes of 1856, and 

 has been little changed. By these laws the planting areas are defined, and county commis- 

 sioners were authorized to survey and map the bottom of the river and cove, and rent to the high- 

 est bidder subdivisions for planting purposes, no one man to own more than 10 acres, and no 

 company more than 30 acres; nor could possession be retained more than five years, at the end of 

 which the land is again put up to be bid upon at a new rent rate. The commissioners were also 

 enjoined to carry out the general laws relating to shell-fish. Supplements to these laws made 

 stricter provisions against trespass and night fishing, put license fees upon all boats according 

 to tonnage, and set on foot a peculiar institution in Maurice Cove, called the Oystermen's Associa- 

 tion. This association consists of all persons "growing oysters iu Maurice River Cove." Once a 

 year it decides by a two-thirds vote what tax (not more than $1 a ton) shall be laid upon all boats 

 of over 5 tons in the association, in addition to the State tax, and it elects an officer empowered to 

 collect this tax and to see that the laws of the locality are not violated. 



The main object of the association is protection to property and honest industry, and the chief 



outlay of the funds derived is the maintenance of a watch-boat and police crew, which shall guard 



the beds in the cove against thieves and arrest all boats that do not show, by a number in the 



middle of the mainsail, that they have a license. Many of these home-delinquents would rather 



SEC. v, VOL. ii 34 



