_The Obstacles to this Proposed System._--Before the proposed system of titles to shellfish ground can be put in actual operation, it is absolutely necessary to have all rights and special privileges pertaining to shore areas revested in State control by repeal of certain laws. In this centralization of authority four main factors must be carefully considered: (1) communal rights to fisheries in tidal areas, as in the colonial beach law of 1641-47; (2) the theory, practice and results of town supervision and control; (3) the rights of riparian owners; (4) the rights of the fishermen and of all other inhabitants of the State. So important are all four that it is necessary to discuss each in turn. (1) _Communal Fishery Rights of the Public._--The fundamental principle upon which the shellfish laws of the State are founded is the so-called beach or free fishing right of the public. While in other States shore property extends only to mean high water, in Massachusetts, Maine and Virginia, the earliest States to enact colonial laws, the riparian property holders own to mean low-water mark. But by specific exception and according to further provisions of this same ancient law the right of fishing (which includes the shellfisheries) below high-water mark is free to any inhabitant of the Commonwealth. The act reads as follows:-- SECTION 2. Every inhabitant who is an householder shall have free fishing and fowling in any great ponds, bays, coves and rivers, so far as the sea ebbs and flows within the precincts of the town where they dwell, unless the freemen of the same town or the General Court have otherwise appropriated them. It is necessary that some change be made in this law, which at present offers no protection to the planters. Its repeal is by no means necessary, as the matter can be adjusted by merely adding "except for the taking of mollusks from the areas set apart and leased for the cultivation of mollusks."