530 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



take the chances of arrest than pay the cost of membership in the association. In all about three 

 hundred boats are licensed by as many planters, and some 6,000 acres of ground are cultivated, 

 all in the vicinity of Maurice Cove. 



The seed used in this planting is procured almost entirely in Delaware Bay. From the in- 

 closed river and ponds, and also from the outside waters of the bay southward of Egg Island, 

 great numbers of large-sized and sweet oysters have always been taken and sent to market or ped- 

 dled through the neighborhood. When planting-beds were so greatly increased in Maurice Eiver 

 Cove, the shore people found that the diligent search for young oysters through the marshes, and 

 the persistent dredging during three-fourths of the year, were sensibly diminishing the supply of 

 marketable oysters attainable by the small open boats. Of these there are fifty or more owned along 

 the shore. They are too small to come under the association's tax; do not belong to planters, but 

 are owned by men who live near the shore, and gain a large part of their livelihood by tonging 

 and hand-dredging. These people, owing to misfortune or improvidence, are too poor to plant, 

 but can do well if they are allowed to catch all the year round in the southern part of the bay, 

 where all the oysters taken are of marketable size. For the protection of this class, involving per- 

 haps a thousand families, the legislature of 1880 prohibited all catching of oysters for planting in 

 the southern part of bay. 



Though large quantities of seed are furnished the planters from the creeks and marshes by 

 men who pick it up, using small boats, yet the main supply necessarily comes from dredging by 

 the large boats, properly fitted with improved windlasses and deep-water apparatus, on the isolated 

 areas in the upper part of the bay. Six or eight fathoms of line is the ordinary amount used, but 

 successful dredging has been done in all parts of the southern half of Delaware Bay, even where the 

 water is more than 500 feet deep. This deep dredging is unprofitable and not practiced ; but that 

 oysters exist there has been shown by experiment, as I was positively assured by Daniel T. 

 IJowell, esq., of Mauricetown, who gave me many interesting notes upon this region. Most of the 

 boats are of good model and build, some exceeding 40 tons burden. They employ, as crews, dur- 

 ing ten months of the year, no less than fifteen hundred men, all citizens of New Jersey, and 

 nearly $500,000 must be spent annually by the owners of Maurice Cove beds in the operation of 

 their fleet, while nearly 2,500,000 bushels of seed oysters are taken from the natural rocks and 

 spread upon inshore grounds each year, to be left, as a rule, two years. As near as can be ascer- 

 tained, 1,600,000 bushels, worth $1,600,000, are at present sent to market in assorted cargoes. A 

 large amount of Philadelphia capital is invested in this region, and I do not know a more gener- 

 ally prosperous oysteriug community than Maurice Cove seems to be. 



THE OCEAN COAST OF NEW JERSEY. On the outer, or ocean coast of New Jersey lies a 

 long series of sedgy lagoons and inlets, protected by outer beaches, extending with little interrup- 

 tion from Cape May to Barnegat, and again in the rear of Sandy Hook. In almost every one of 

 these local oysters have been transplanted to private beds for additional growth, and at some 

 points a large success has been attained. In Cape May and Atlantic Counties nearly every farmer 

 is also an oyster-planter, getting his seed in the immediate vicinity. The center of this district is 

 in the neighborhood of Atlantic City, where the muddy bottom of Lake's Bay and other noted 

 inlets largely supply the Philadelphia markets. 



Many of these planters go in their own sloops alter the seed to The Gravelling, a shoal sev- 

 eral miles square lying in the mouth of the Mullica Eiver, at the head of Great Bay, N. J. There 

 seems little diminution of the supply of young oysters in this piece of water, which is given by 

 law a summer-rest, and not a few marketable oysters are tonged up every season. Hither, also, 

 resort a host of planters from towns northward, and at the opening of the season, on October 1, 



