260 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
The revenue from this source is a sort of a contingent fund upon which to draw when 
special public expenditures are deemed necessary for the good of the oystermen. 
By act of 1884 (ch. 255) the county commissioners of Somerset County were author- 
ized (but not required) to utilize the revenue derived from the issuing of scraping 
licenses in that county to vessels measuring over 10 tons in the purchase and planting 
of shells on the public grounds within the county limits. The said commissioners 
were also empowered to make such regulations as might be necessary to protect the 
areas so improved; and it was further provided that “in case the general assembly 
shall provide for the sale or lease of oyster-grounds for the propagation of oysters the 
said county commissioners may buy or lease the said waters of said county for the use 
of the people thereof.” This was a very ambitious undertaking, and except the very 
small operations in Sinepuxent Bay during those years immediately following 1874, as 
just noted, but which do not furnish a comparison, it was and is yet without a parallel 
in any part of the world — the annual expenditure of a large sum of public money in 
the cultivation of oysters on the public domain for the use of a common fishery. The 
sum available for this purpose then amounted to about $4,000 annually, but was rapidly 
increasing, and the area of the ground upon which operation was authorized approx- 
imated 180 square miles, covered with 60 square miles of oyster beds. The authority 
given the county commissioners at their discretion to permit or interdict oystering on 
the improved reefs is particularly noticeable, especially when it is considered that that 
is the principal oyster region of the greatest oyster-producing estuary in the world, 
and that in no other locality in America are the inherited privileges or customs of the 
common fishery more zealously guarded. 
An effort was made by the county officials to properly enforce the intentions of 
the enactment. Quantities of shells were planted and a special police was provided 
for protecting the areas improved. But within a few months the county court 
expressed an obiter dictum that the provision for excluding the oystermen from those 
areas was not sufficiently explicit, and the police protection was withdrawn. At the 
next session of the general assembly (1886) the law was amended so as to meet the 
views expressed by the court; but iu the meantime a change had been effected in the 
personnel of the county commissioners, and the new board, using their discretion in 
the matter as the law permitted, failed to exercise the authority given them. In 1888 
the regulations, which had then been inoperative for three years, were repealed by 
the assembly. 
By act of 1886 (ch. 314) an appropriation of $5,000 was made to be used by the 
commander of the State fishery force in the purchase and depositing of shells in May 
and June of that year in such places in the Chesapeake as that official might deem 
suitable for the purpose of obtaining thereon a “ set” of oysters. For some cause the 
planting was delayed until the latter part of June, and as the spawning season was 
then almost over the undertaking was not a success. Indeed, had the shells been 
planted earlier the result might have been practically the same, for the set obt ained in 
other portions of the bay during that year was not abundant. This was intended only 
as an experiment and not as the inauguration of a State policy. A similar experiment 
made by the State of Delaware in 1891, at an expense of $2,000, has, it - is reported, 
resulted very satisfactorily. 
