18 Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 
marketable size before the opening of the next. These esti- 
mates are intended to show whether the bars are tending to- 
ward depletion or toward continued productivity. They are 
thought to be fairly accurate for such natural bars as have 
a hard foundation, for on such bars, oysters and shells are 
usually fairly evenly distributed. For bars which cover bot- 
toms composed of soft mud the estimates are not to be con- 
sidered accurate, because on such bottoms oysters grow in 
dense patches or lumps, the bottom between being entirely 
barren. 
The quantities of oysters taken by the tongmen at the ex- 
amination stations are made the basis for the estimates of the 
yield of the natural bars, and the estimated yield is therefore 
in excess of the actual, for the stations selected by the local 
assistants for examination are usually those which the chain- 
wire apparatus indicated to be better stocked with oysters 
than the adjacent areas. 
The number of licenses issued to oystermen during suc- 
cessive oyster seasons affords an index to the general con- 
dition of the public oyster grounds in the various parts of 
the State, and supplies a fairly satisfactory basis upon which 
to estimate the total quantity of oysters yielded by the public 
oyster grounds of the State during any particular season. 
For this reason the following tables are introduced, all but 
the first having been taken from an article, in the Bulletin 
of the U. S. Fish Commission for 1892, entitled ‘‘ The Oyster 
Industry of Maryland,’’ by Charles H. Stevenson. 
An approximately correct estimate of the total number of 
bushels of oysters taken from the public oyster grounds dur- 
ing any oyster season may be secured by multiplying the 
total number of licenses issued that season to tongmen, 
scrapers and dredgers, by 450, 1,500 and 3,500 respectively, 
these numbers representing the quantity of oysters a tong- 
man, seraper or dredger must catch during an oyster season 
in order to have secured a livelihood. . 
It often happens during seasons when oysters are scarce a 
or are poor in quality or when the price of oysters is ab- 
normally low, that oystermen do not continue to work 
throughout the ‘entire season and for such seasons the esti- 
mated total yield of the oyster grounds, made on the pro- 
posed basis, would likely be very considerably greater than 
the actual yield. 
