Report of ti)c superintendent of 

 v$f)ellfisf)eries 



3l)ellfi5l) Culture in New <Jork, v>tate 



By B. PRANK WOOD.* 



WE learn from the dictionaries that a farm is defined to be a tract 

 of land under one control devoted to agriculture, etc., and that 

 agriculture is the cultivation of the soil for food products or 

 other useful or valuable growths. All this is very familiar knowledge as 

 applied to the dry land, but that there may fairly be brought within 

 these definitions the operations of an industry in which lands covered by 

 the salt waters of our bays and harbors are tilled, cultivated, raked, har- 

 rowed and planted with seedling bivalves, and harvests of a valuable pro- 

 duct garnered, constituting a superb food for the masses, is less familiar and 

 to many may seem quite astonishing. 



Unique Farming. 



It is within a comparatively few years that this unique style of farming 

 has had its growth and development until now many thousands of acres of 

 land under water have been carefully surveyed and the boundaries marked 

 by buoys and stakes. Such lots or tracts are held by the oyster planters 

 by virtue of grants or leases from the State, or other owner. In some cases 

 the lands are leased by counties and towns. Upward of thirty thousand 

 acres in Xew York State waters have been granted by the State for shellfish 

 cultivation. The separate tracts have been surveyed by the State Sur- 

 veyor of oyster lands, and for the purpose of preserving the records of 

 boundaries accurate maps have been made and during a series of years 

 have accumulated until these maps, with the notes of surveys, constitute 



* Supt. Shellfisheries, State of Xew York. 

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