8 OYSTER BEDS OF JAMES RIVER, VIRGINIA. 



The Baylor survey was of an entirely different character from 

 that conducted by Winslow. It was in no sense an examination of 

 the oyster beds themselves, but primarily and avowedly a delimitation 

 of boundaries winch included the recognized or reputed oyster-bear- 

 ing bottom, as pointed out by local commissioners or representa- 

 tives of each oyster-producing county. It is the writer's understand- 

 ing that the county commissioners were, under the state law ordering 

 the survey, the final arbiters with whom rested the decision whether 

 or not a given area should be included within the boundaries of the 

 public grounds. So far as can be learned no examinations whatever 

 were made on the beds, the commissioners using their judgment and 

 local knowledge in selecting the corners and the engineers with their 

 theodolites cutting in the points indicated from stations on the shore. 



Whether or not beds were omitted from the confines of the public 

 grounds so located can not now be satisfactorily determined, owing 

 to the development of the planting industry, outside of the Baylor 

 lines, on all or most of the available bottom. It is evident, however, 

 that in the region under discussion no very extensive rocks were dis- 

 regarded, and a comparison of the results of the recent survey with 

 that of 1892 shows that the Baylor fines, considered as a broad 

 scheme of delimitation, conform closely with the general distribution 

 of the rocks. At several places, notably on Gun and Kettle Hole 

 rocks, parts of the natural beds undoubtedly fell outside of the lines, 

 but the writer hazards the suggestion that this may not have been 

 through inadvertence but because those parts of the rocks may have 

 been already taken up as private holdings. 



It has been claimed, and Mr. Baylor himself has so stated in 

 official communications to the State, that a very considerable area 

 of barren bottom, amounting to many thousand acres, was included 

 within the public grounds. That this should be so, under the sys- 

 tem adopted by the local commissioners and under the desire to 

 assure the inclusion of all naturally productive bottom, was inevi- 

 table. Moreover, the boundaries of the beds are irregular curves, 

 while the including surveyed boundaries must be straight lines, for 

 purposes of administration and policing as long and unbroken as 

 possible. To have excluded the greater part of this barren bottom 

 would have necessitated a careful location of the natural rocks and 

 the breaking up of the public grounds into a considerable number 

 of small or moderate areas instead of segregating them into a few 

 large ones. 



To what extent the claim that great areas of barren bottom are 

 included in the public grounds is justified will appear from the accom- 

 panying charts and in the following descriptions and discussions. 



