Lda 
published in the case of counties whose surveys were first 
filed. Later on, due perhaps to a change in the Board, there 
seems to have been a tacit assumption that the filing of the 
chart in the county court, covering as it did so vital an interest 
of the community, would be a news item of sufficient impor- 
tance to be noted in the county journals without putting the 
State to the expense of advertisement. Even in the counties 
where this advertisement was not inserted, as in the case of 
Dorchester, numerous copies of the charts were distributed 
through the counties, being sent to attorneys, State or county 
officers, oyster packers, oystermen who had assisted in the 
survey and village postmasters. Under these conditions the 
natural-rock oystermen can scarcely be heard to say they did 
not know the chart had been filed. It is inconceivable that the 
postmasters in small oystering communities could receive a 
set of these charts and be so little interested in them that they 
would not exhibit them to the oystermen in the community. 
It would also seem inconceivable that men in political life, 
who had been constantly appealing to the oystermen for their 
vote, on the ground that they were the champions of the 
oystermen’s rights, could be so little interested that the charts 
could pass into and out of their offices unnoticed. ‘This con- 
tention, however, is one which is actually made and the oyster- 
men in some of these counties, as well as in others where the 
filing of the charts was actually advertised, have insisted that 
they had no knowledge of the filing or of their opportunity of 
appeal until the time for such appeal had elapsed. 
The field work of the survey, plotting data secured, prepa- 
ration of charts and publication of the charts and findings of 
the Commission occupied the time from 1906 to 1912. As 
county after county was finished, however, the charts were 
filed and the bottom within these counties thrown open to 
lease. 
During this six-year period, from 1906 to 1912, a number 
of leases were issued. A number of small leases were written 
immediately after the formation of the Commission under a 
provision of the law which gave holders of five-acre lots under 
prior acts an opportunity to preserve their holdings under the 
new system. In 1906, 2,116 acres were leased, including the 
