216 
productivity of the bed. That much is assumed, hut on this 
section there appears to he an increase in the number of oys- 
ters, and that increase must be accounted for in some way. 
The table showing the number of oysters removed proves 
that the number taken from this section to be a constantly 
decreasing one, for in 1878 there were taken by twice as many 
vessels four times as many oysters as w T ere removed in 1879. 
This may be due to two causes, and probably is due, to 
some extent, to both. The productivity of the beds may be 
impaired, or the fishery may be less earnest and exhaustive 
than in the past. We can only account for the increased pro- 
portions by assuming the latter to be the case, the beds hav- 
ing probably enforced a resting period by the material failure 
of the oysters. 
The proportions and yield in Pocomoke Sound need no 
comment. Not only are the proportions below the standard 
and decreasing, but the yield is also decreasing, as it naturally 
would under such circumstances. 
Naturally, as soon as any bed ceases to give an adequate 
return for the labor expended upon it, the dredging vessels 
will seek other and more profitable fields for exertion, and the 
desertion of any bed may be accepted as an indication of its 
decreased productive power, and, as has been mentioned un- 
der the head of Statistical Information, dredging vessels have, 
to a great extent, left the Sounds for the waters of the Bay 
and Potomac Piver. 
Considering the abnormal ratios between the mature and 
young oysters; the increased percentage of debris on the 
beds ; the smallness of the proportions to the square yard, and 
the decrease of those proportions on most of the beds, together 
with the large number of oysters, young and old, annually 
removed, I am of the opinion that though the fecundity of 
the beds in Tangier Sound is not yet destroyed, it is very- 
much impaired, and that not only are the beds rapidly and 
surely deteriorating from the excessive fishery, hut that their 
total failure, like unto that in Pocomoke Sound, is but a ques- 
tion of time. 
So far as it is possible to make any more exact prediction 
