IMPROVED FORM OF OYSTER TONGS. 
163 
Tlie ouly possible objection to it is that it is necessarily heavier than the ordinary 
tongs, and in very deep water requires the use of a small windlass attached to the 
mast or elsewhere on the boat from which it is being operated. With this adjunct it 
is said that even a small boy can manage it with ease. 
These tongs were first employed in 1885-86 from Solomon's Island, Maryland, 
where they came into general use during the season of 1887-’88, when it is estimated 
that two-thirds of the oystermen in that vicinity were iirovided with them. Up to 
the present time but few are employed elsewhere in the Chesapeake Bay, although it 
j can be predicted that they will eventually become almost universally used throughout 
that region. The deep-water tongs can be readily operated in over 300 feet of water. 
At St. George’s Island, Maryland, near the mouth of the Potomac Eiver, one of 
the few other localities in which the apparatus has been tested, one pair was operated 
in the fall of 1890 in water as deep as 120 feet with much success, the owner having- 
no difficulty in stocking $25 daily, whereas, with the old tongs, $5 was considered 
' very good remuneration for a day’s work. 
I There are said to be large hitherto undisturbed beds in the middle of the Potomac 
River which are no doubt destined to yield handsome returns. Similar reports of the 
'efficacy of the tongs and the opening up of new grounds come from other places in 
which the apparatus has been tried. 
The following extract from a letter written by the inventor, Mr. Charles L. Marsh, 
of Solomon’s Island, Maryland, dated September 18, 1890, will give some additional 
information concerning the advantages of his device: 
The difference in the catch between my tongs and the old tongs is perfectly astonishing. On beds 
or bars where oysters are plentiful, from 3 pecks to a bushel of oysters can be gathered at each filling, 
and from 30 to 100 bushels caught per day. With the old tongs from 8 to 25 bushels per day is 
regarded to be a good catch. 
I have manufactured, aud licensed others to manufacture, about twelve hundred pairs of tongs 
since the issuing of letters patent to me, in December, 1887, an average of about four hundred pairs 
X)er year. The tongs, with the clamps, blocks, weights, and all necessary equipments, are worth $16 
per pair. My tongs are successfully operated where the old tongs, with handles, cannot be used, viz., 
in any depth of water where oysters grow, i. e., from 30 to 200 feet. Hence the value and advan- 
tage of my tongs over the old ones, in taking oysters in deep water where they could not be reached 
by tongmen before my invention. The greater the depth of water the greater the catch, from the fact 
that oysters in deep water have remained undisturbed for many years for the want of a xiroper machine 
like mine to reach them. Another advantage of my tongs is the cultivating and enlarging of the 
deep-water bars, whereby the oysters are becoming as x^rofitable to the tongmen in deep water, as 
heretofore in the creeks aud coves. 
Informatiou from other sources, some of which I have gathered in personal inter- 
views with fishermen, so fully substantiates the above statements that there seems to 
be ample justification in quoting them, especially in view of the important beneficial 
influence the dissemination of these facts may have upon the shellfish fisheries. 
The principle involved in these tongs is of wide application in the molluscan fish- 
eries. In addition to being adafited to all deep-water beds of oysters, it is apparently 
admirably suited for scallop aud clam fishing in deep water, where the present meth- 
ods are unsatisfactory or impossible. Some modification in the teeth and carrying 
portion might be necessary in order to make the tongs suitable for the capture of 
other mollusks, although it is reported that the fishermen of Back Eiver, Virginia, 
have found the apparatus, as already described, to be very efficacious in taking clams 
( Venus mereenaria) in water too deep for the ordinary tongs. 
