150 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION, 
tent a consideration of the industry as it exists in the bay. 
Whatever other localities may produce; however valuable sys- 
tems and methods in use in other States may be, whatever su- 
periority of means or intelligence other fishermen may possess, 
they have not yet succeeded in.wresting the trade from the 
Maryland and Virginia people. Superiority in intelligence, 
means, systems and crops, are but as so many drops in the buck- 
et when compared with the natural advantages offered by the 
Chesapeake and enjoyed by those who fish in her waters. 
The present condition of the Chesapeake fishery is, then, prac- 
tically the condition of the whole industry, and the future pros- 
pects of the whole may be largely predicated upon the prospect 
in Maryland and Virginia. What is that condition? What are 
those prospects? Generally speaking, the condition is bad; the 
prospect worse. It is stated by many persons of good judgment 
and sufficient knowledge to enable them to speak with authority, 
that not only has the number of oysters on the great natural 
beds diminished very much of late, éspecially during the last 
five years, but it is stated by one of the most eminent and exper- 
ienced observers and students of this question, Dr. William K. 
Brooks, of the Johns Hopkins University, chairman of the Mary- 
land Oyster Commission and a member of the National Acad- 
emy of Sciences, that the oyster property of the State is in im- 
minent danger of complete destruction. From time to time 
during the last decade notes of warning have been sounded, but 
unfortunately, have not been heeded. Only within the last few 
years has the public awakened to the gravity of the situation 
and the necessity of taking steps to avert the threatened evil. 
The vague feeling of alarm which seized the oystermen as they 
discovered that the apparently exhaustless beds were no longer 
yielding their former returns, became sufficiently concentrated 
two years ago to cause the appointment, by the State of Mary- 
land, of a commission to investigate the condition of the whole 
oyster industry. The rapid deterioration, both in size and qual- 
ity of the oysters offered in the Baltimore markets, together 
with the frequent failure of the supply altogether, roused the 
packers of the city to set in motion under their own auspices, an 
entirely separate investigation. The expansion of the guerilla- 
