Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1908-11-27
FISH AND OYSTER NOTES.


+ The oyster shocking houses on lower
had all the orders they
could fill last week, some working at
night. This week orders are a little
slack, owing to warm weather. Oysters
are plentiful, selling last week at SIS to
50 cents bushel. This week they can
be bought as low as 35 cents bushel.
Fish dealers in the new wholesale
fish market were surprised yesterday
to learn that big roe shad had been
received in the days arrivals and was
being offered for sale. The shad,
which had evidently become. separated
from its fellow fish when the school
left the waters of the Chesapeake bay
last spring for summer quarters. has
remained in local waters since that
time. 1t was caught in the Rappahan-
mock river and was shipped to Balti-
more. When offered for sale it brought
Sl.-Baltimore News. November IT
q THE FISH AND OYSTER QUESTION.
Northampton Timesj
While we do not pretend to have can
vassed the entire realm of legislation in
Virginia, we hazard the proposition,
nevertheless, that no one question has
received larger volume of smaller con-
sideration than that involving the vel
fare of fish ard oysters. From the Gre
alton of the Committee ON the Chesa-
peake and its Tributaries to the present
day these popular and portentious ele-
ments of human diet have each been
the unhappy victim of more expert
mental and academic legislative tinker
ing than all other functions of state
government combined, and the actuating
cause of large part of it is to all out
ward appearances composed in about
equal parts of ignorance and greed.
Most of our philosophers and law
makers who have given so freely of
their time to the discussion of the ques-
ton seem rather to ignore the generally
accepted fact that most information of
value is acquired by diligent study at
the shortest possible range, and concern
themselves less with quality than
quantity in the matter of evidence on
which to base much of their judgment.
the whole theory being that every evil,
whether real or imaginary, attending
any phase of either subject is easily
remediable by statute, il only the right
statute can ever be located. Possibly
they are right, but we doubt it. The
people who read daily papers, some, for
example, of Norfolk and Richmond.
would never suspect that the shores
OF Northampton county, not to mention
Accomac, abound at this moment in
oysters of as great quantity and fine
quality as ever before in her history:
yet such is positively true, and the
market is lacking. With the finest
Imaginable supply of the largest
oysters, grcwn and fattened in the
purest water that flows, beyond the
range of city sewer or other source
of infection or impurity, there is to-
day little or no market; yet we hear
and read from time to time that our
oyster supply is depleted, and all on
account of Inadequate Legislation and
administration. 9.
Nor would the same reader believe
with handmade fish famine heralded
abroad over the-land, THAT ten thousand
barrels of hog-fish and spot have been
caught along the Jersey coast within
the past few weeks; but it is true.
What does it mean?
A few years ago blue-fishing by
smacks was large and profitable en-
terprise on the Chesapeake. These
smacks deposited tons of bait along the
lower bay in order to induce, tempt and
assemble blue fish, a most effective
method, and one which produced like
results upon other table fish, such as
hog-fsh, spot, trout and perch, in con-
sequence of all which there was no
scarcity of either. But the short
sighted envious dog-in-the-manger
policy of the ever-present, hide-bound.
narrow-guaged fool got in his work, and
the General Assembly excluded non-resi-
northumberland from our waters.
Now those boats lie beyond the limit off
our Capes, deposit bait as formerly, catch
as many of the same fish as they ever
did. at the same time furnish food which
arrests other Foolish swimming north
from southern waters. with the result
that they do not come in the bay as of
yore, but follow the smacks.
Let anyone who doubts this take day
in one of those dories with small hook
and line and, if he is neither candi-
date or friend of candidate for
position on the Commission of Fisher
les, he'll return at night convinced.