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barren and certain areas as permanently natural bar, with no 
provision for adjustment to meet future changes. These areas 
had been marked out and the natural-rock oystermen had 
allowed the time for appeal to pass without action. The game 
had been played through to the finish and they had lost. The 
Board of Shell Fish Commissioners, however, did not feel 
that it was its duty to ignore scientific facts. Whatever may 
have been the bargain between the natural-rock oystermen on 
the one hand and the advocates of oyster culture on the other, 
the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners was certain that the 
State as a whole had believed in the possibility of a permanent 
survey and would have provided, had it foreseen the actual 
course of events, for the possibility of subsequent correction. 
It did not believe that the State had ever contemplated that 
the natural bar, ready to yield an adequate crop, should be 
turned over to a private owner. For this reason it announced 
its desire to find a way by which disputed areas could be 
withheld from leasing temporarily, until the Legislature could 
be asked to authorize a re-examination of the area in dispute, 
with a view of correcting the survey and bringing it down to 
date. In the effort to bring this about, it found a partial solu- 
tion of the difficulty in the discretion which the Legislature of 
1912 had given the Commission as to rentals. The Commis- 
sion was free to fix a price upon any particular piece of ground, 
subject only to minimum but not to a maximum limit. It 
therefore announced that it would grant no leases on protested 
areas until after re-examination and if this re-examination 
showed the ground to be stocked with oysters it would then 
issue a lease, but only upon a rental commensurate with the 
value of the land. ‘This action was communicated to protest- 
ants as early as March, 1913, and to various representatives 
of the oystermen during April and May of that year. 
Meanwhile, the growing discontent of the oystermen them- 
selves resulted in the formation of oystermen’s associations 
in the various tidewater counties of the State, which were 
later consolidated into a single organization. ‘The Secretary 
of the Commission immediately communicated with the Presi- 
dent of the consolidation, suggesting that he arrange for a 
meeting of the associations at which a member of the Shell 
