3860 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
part of the bay most available for the present system of laying out 
oysters, and the managers of the Morgan Oyster Company informed 
me that they owned about all that they considered valuable for their 
method of growing oysters. Many consider the sale of the tide lands 
an injustice to the people. It is said that the railroad companies are 
proprietors in tide lands to such an extent that the city of Oakland is 
greatly handicapped for water frontage and wharf facilities. 
The law permitting the sale of the tide lands is not, however, an 
unmixed evil, for while it might lead to monopoly it would allow oyster- 
planters to reap the harvests they sow. It is now conceded by many 
who have long upheld the system of public dredging in the Chesapeake 
region, that private cultivation must be provided for before there can 
be any marked increase in the oyster supply. 
The Tide Land and Water Front Company of San Francisco are pro- 
prietors of the tide lands to a considerable extent, and offer them for 
sale at the uniform price of $25 per acre. Notwithstanding the fact 
that much desirable oyster-bedding ground is already fenced in, there 
is still much good oyster-ground unoccupied in the southern part of 
the bay. In the Long Island Sound region, where the oyster-ground 
“an be bought or leased from the States, the system of private owner- 
ship of the beds has been found perfectly practicable and very advanta- 
geous. 
In reply to inquiries respecting the value of the tide Jands now in- 
closed and used by the oyster-growers of San Francisco, Mr. Moraghan 
writes me: 
The price depends upon the location, the kind of bottom, whether mud, shell, or 
sand, ete., and more than all, upon the improvement or amount of labor bestowed 
on the land. We have some beds that are worth fully $1,000 per acre to us, as we 
have been improving and working upon them for the past ten years in bringing 
them to their present condition. 
Mr. Moraghan adds that unimproved tide land, such as is used in 
the Californian method of bedding oysters, is very cheap, being worth 
$10 per acre, and that such lands can be had adjacent to the best 
inclosed beds for $20 per acre. 
Suggested introduction of other species of oysters.—With evidence at 
hand of the propagation of our own oyster (O. virginica) in California, 
the introduction of foreign species seems superfluous; but Prof. George 
Davidson and Mr. Hf. D. Dunn, of San Francisco, both of whom have 
resided in Japan, have frequently spoken to me of the large oyster of 
Japan in connection with the subject of oyster-growing in California. 
Prof. Davidson sends the following note on this subject: 
The oyster I knew in Japan was found in the vicinity of Nagasaki, where I was 
stationed during the three months October, November, and December, 1874, and 
part of January, 1875. The oyster is there very large, full, and well flavored. I 
obtained some shells that were fully 12 inches long. I tried to interest some of our 
steamship captains to bring them to San Francisco, but at that time the trip fre- 
quently consumed a full month, with a change of steamer at Yokohama, and they 
