2020 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Apr. 4

lished in the city of Baltimore and one newspaper pub-
lished in a county adjoining said district which shall
be declared to be open for a period of three weeks, with
at least one notice inserted in each of said papers dur-
ing each of said weeks. The position of all natural
beds or bars within said district shall be located by
actual survey and be indicated upon said maps of the-
Chesapeake Bay shall contain one hundred acres.
The said sections shall be as nearly rectangular as
possible. The location of each of the sections shall be
shown on the maps. The said maps shall be filed in
the office of said commissioner in the city of Baltimore
immediately after the preparation of the same. The
said sections shall be numbered and the rental per
acre for each section shall be clearly stated in a book
kept for that purpose by the commissioners and refer-
ence shall be made to said book in the advertisement
hereinbefore provided for.

"Sec. 7. And be it enacted, That it shall be the duty
of the Shell Fish Commissioners to lease, in the name
of the State of Maryland tracts of land in the area in-
dicated in this Act, provided that no tract so leased
shall contain less than ten acres or more than one
hundred acres. No one person shall be permitted, by
assignment, or in any other manner, to acquire a greater
amount of land than one hundred acres in the open
waters of the bay. No leases of oyster land, except-
ing leases made to owners of land within county limits,
shall be made only to bona fide and responsible persons,
after the said district shall be declared open for oyster
culture, and it shall be the duty of the commissioners
to demand from each proposed lessee security for the
first three years rent, to be approved by said Com-
missioners; the term of such lessees shall be twenty
years and the annual rent reserved to the State shall
be a sum not less than three nor more than five dollars
per acre, to be decided with in the said limits by the
Commissioners in accordance with his judgment, of
the value of the land leased; said annual rent shall be
made payable at the end of each year to the Shell Fish
Commissioners. If any part of the rent reserved under
such leases shall remain unpaid for more than sixty
days after the same becomes due, such lease or leases