m LD r^ nj ru D D OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM, a m o o Leicester, "Provincial ^Icdical Journal" Office. OYSTERS, all abofrt tliem. BEING A complete l^istor^ of tlje titular subject, 01^ all points of ijecessa-ry and information feoiij tl^c Kai?liest to tliose of tl^e Present Time, nitii^erous additions, facts, ai^cl i^otes, L^ JOHN R. PHILPOTS, L.R.C.P. & S. Edir?., J.P., &c. JOHN RICHARDSOX & Medical Pxiblisl^ers, LOKDOK: 6, Great Rdssell LEICESTER: 10, Friar Lane. 1890. , ' C- I > / f v^. DEDICATED (BY PERMISSION) TO PROFESSOR T. H. HUXLEY, AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF RESPECT FOR HIS GREAT LITERARY ATTAINMENTS AXD MANY VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE, BY HIS SINCERE ADMIRER, JOHN R. PHILPOTS. " HAPPY is he who lives to understand, Not human nature only, but explores All natures, to the end that he may find The law that governs each ; and where begins The union, the partition where, that makes Kind and degree, among all visible beings ; The constitutions, powers, and faculties "Which they inherit cannot step beyond And cannot fall beneath ; that do assign To every class its station and its office, Through all the mighty commonwealth of things ; Up from the creeping plant to sovereign Man. Such converse, if directed by a meek, Sincere, and humble spirit, teaches love : For knowledge is delight ; and such delight Breeds love : yet, suited as it rather is To thought and to the climbing intellect, It teaches less to love, than to adore ; If that be not indeed the highest love ! ' : Wordsworth. PREFACE. MY object in preparing the present work has been to furnish the reader, and the public in general, with a clear and intelligent description of the titular subject, and to bring the medicinal properties and edible value of the common Oyster more in favour (despite the increasing demand for it) than what with many people it has hitherto obtained. There are thousands of individuals who have never eaten an oyster; who from nausea aroused through a delicate nervous organism, or, through disgust inspired and influenced by a too sensitive imagination cannot bring themselves so far as to "screw (their) courage to the sticking point " to venture the attempt: but, once made, the disgust is conquered, and shuddering antipathy becomes natural craving. The taste and the memory thereof continually haunt the appetite of the gastronomical convert while he or she dreams of satisfactory indulgence in the near future. It is upon such of my readers, that I have sought to urge the desirability nay, the necessity of habitually partaking of the esculent mollusc. To me the compiling of this book has been a labour of love, and, from a medical point of view, my chief aim in its publication has been prompted by a conscientious feeling of duty and good will towards my fellow man. 8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. What success my book may have I know not, I can only hope that its reception will be favourable ; " 'Tis not in mortals to command success, But (I'll endeavour to) deserve it." and, should the public deem that I have worthily fulfilled my promise, I shall be content with whatever praise or favour be awarded me. Thus, armed with a good inten- tion, I feel that I have chosen one of those subjects wherein I take the public's health to be much concerned, and wherein, though I may not be able to inform men more than they know, yet perhaps I may give them occasion to consider more than they do. Another reason for my undertaking this work has been the long felt want of a combined TEXT-BOOK for the student of Zoology, and a BOOK OF REFERENCE for the general reader, which, with all due deference to the reader's opinion, I claim mine to be. True, there are able relative articles in our Magazines, and also Books replete with scientific information, written by some of the foremost Professors of the day ; but the former are merely a conglomeration of curtailed extracts from standard works instructive, certainly, but as cer- tainly unsatisfactory, on account of their incompleteness while, on the other hand, although exhaustive, the books are so only in the scientific branch of the subject in question, ignoring that more general information which has long been looked for by a large majority of "Anxious Inquirers," or where they do touch upon the matter it is only in a disappointingly abbreviated form. Hence, I feel justified in saying that what has been a long felt want to me has proved the same to others, at least, I infer so from the complaint of one of three letters which some time since PREFACE. appeared in The Standard, under the heading of " Oyster Cultivation," and which I quote without abridgment. It is as follows : " A letter appeared in one of your late impressions, on the subject of laying down oysters to fatten, and the writer asked whv were not the foreshores made more use of ? j The reason is, I believe, that few people know how to begin, or what to do. There are hundreds of miles of shore that might be made use of, and that would yield a profit exceeding in value the richest crop the land could produce. Will your correspondent, " Native," throw some light on the subject ? I have been anxiously looking for information, but can find no book or person to give it me. Any person living on the Estuaries or creeks might have his Oyster or Mussel Pare, as so many do abroad." The italics are mine, and, I am led to hope that the words emphasized corroborate my humble endeavours to meet and supply the demand. And what though this is but only one seeker of the needful volume, it is and must be self evident that there are surely many more. With regard to the remark of the above correspondent relative to any person having his own Oyster or Mussel Pare, I think the idea quite practical, but (for reasons explained hereafter) rather Utopian in consummation that is, in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, though not exactly living " on an Estuary," I am sufficiently near one, where oysters j ' j j have been and are still in abundance, to sympathise with him. Considerable prominence has been given to the scientific division of these bivalves, the greater amount of individual character presented by these requiring that the habits of each species should be fully dwelt upon. 10 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. But in addition to the reasons stated for my under- taking this work, I respectfully venture to emphasize the relative inducements culminating in the present volume, and its hoped-for instructive, entertaining, and referential utility to the reading public, by quoting the strictures upon this point of my subject of a vigorous writer in the Quar- terly Review (vol. 144), who, criticising some "Reports on Oyster Fisheries," says : " One cause which has tended to the spoliation of the shoals is the ignorance which has prevailed, and still prevails, of the natural and economic history of fish and crustaceans. Beyond the fact already alluded to of their enormous fecundity, we know almost nothing about them. Fishes and crustaceans have been classified in families or groups, and many of them have been carefully described, and most of them figured and coloured with more or less care. But what, let us ask, is known of their habits of life, their rates of growth, and the age at which they become reproductive. We know very little, indeed, of those features of their lives about which we should know most It is from want of such knowledge that the public now suffer. The decreasing supplies of lobsters, crabs, and oysters, as well as the marked falling off now apparent in our supplies of both flat and round fish, may be set down to that mal-economy which is born of ignorance and cupidity. What does it matter, for example, to the consumer whether an oyster yields spat sufficient for the production of five hundred or five thousand of its kind, if he does not obtain a share of them? The natural waste of fish-life and this is a fact that has been too much ignored is commensurate with the spawning power bestowed upon them As regards the natural history of the oyster, it is curious that although it is an PREFACE. I I animal easy of access, which can be seen and handled all the year round and all day long, we have almost no exact knowledge of its habits, of its real power of reproduction, or of the circumstances which govern the rise and fall of oyster spat" In conclusion, I must record my indebtedness to past and present works, including Reviews and Magazines, together with grateful acknowledgments to living authors, whose names are mentioned with the extracts quoted from their instructive volumes. My thanks are also due to those friends by whose kind assistance my voluntary and congenial task has been con- siderably lightened and encouraged ; the foremost of whom are Messrs. J. H. Henderson, C. Carus-Wilson, A. J. H. Crespi, F. Slater, and Lieutenant Francis Winslow, of the United States Navy, with others whose names are men- tioned in these pages wherever their contributions come into requisition. Lastly, but by no means least, in tendering my sincere thanks to those by whose kind permission I have been so well enabled to adorn my work, I am especially grateful to Mrs. H. N. Moseley, whose generosity in allowing me to draw ad libitum from the valuable work of her eminent father, Dr. John Gwyn Jeffreys, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c., I cannot sufficiently repay with a " Thank you very much." That I have availed myself somewhat largely of the golden opportunity thus happily presented to me, in Chap- ters 8 and 9, I candidly admit ; but I have done so under the influence of several motives, the principal of which are (i) an ardent desire to promulgate the Gospel of Nature, combined with a Zoologist's respect for the learned, accurate research, and masterly conchological knowledge 12 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. displayed in his always-reliable, deeply-interesting, and highly-instructive volumes ; and (2) a consciousness of the inadequacy of my own zoological observations and conchological knowledge in comparison with that of the justly-esteemed author in question, to thoroughly meet the requirements of the Naturalist, and (I hope) the appre- ciative pleasure of the general reader. Possibly my close and faithful adherence to the text of the above-named writer may demand some slight apology from me, or, at least, an explanation of the reason for my verbatim quotations of his minute and scientifically-graphic description of the conchifera. In reply to that, I may plead that no apology is requisite ; for, it being understood that this work is, professedly, a compilation, continuous and complete extracts from such a standard source surely do not need an apology. But, even granting this appa- rently questionable premise, the reader may urge that I should not have overstepped the modesty of a favour in avariciously extracting the bulk of a fat pamphlet, where (perhaps) only a few pages had been intended as an advantageous aid by the friend mentioned. In answering this natural observation, I must emphati- cally impress upon the reader's mind the fact, that to have abridged Jeffreys' text would but have served to diminish its merits. His concise style is so favourably adapted to scientific literary composition, that it allows neither of addition, subtraction, division, or alteration, without entirely nullifying its characteristic construction, and illustrative or critical utility. To the Conchologist his observations and critical remarks, his various linguistical abilities and wide reading, greatly enhance the value of the work. To the general reader, although the scientific PREFACE. 13 nomenclature of shells (which for his benefit I have care- fully translated) may be somewhat dry reading, there is a large amount of information throughout which cannot fail to be instructive. Apart, however, from the scientific portion of his " British Conchology," Jeffreys shows literary abilities of so high an order that one cannot but regret that his leisure moments were not spent in the composition of Essays, in which (great as his name is and will assuredly remain, for time to come, in Conchological Annals,) the bright star of his fame would have shone with equal, if not with more resplendency. But we must be thankful for what he has done. He has sojourned amongst us, and he has departed to another and a better world ; and, in his Apprenticeship to Nature toiling through a peaceful and happy lifetime as the MAN- APPOINTED REVEALER and EXPOUNDER of some of her wonderful mysteries he proved himself one of the greatest Conchologists, if not the greatest that ever lived ; and I need hardly add that the world of science the Naturalist's world the world in general, and far Posterity itself, will not willingly let his name sink in oblivion. If, then, an apology be looked for from me, for lengthy quotation from the above-named standard author, let me make it in the words of Ruskin : "I have always thought that more true force of persuasion might be obtained by rightly choosing and arranging what others have said, than by painfully saying it again in one's own way." Fors Clavigera, 21, 14. INTRODUCTION. Of the millions who live to eat and eat to live, in this wide world of ours, how few there are who do not, at proper times and seasons, enjoy a good oyster. To the many, not only of the ignorant and stolid, but of the culti- vated and intellectual, an oyster is simply a delicacy. The mere oyster-eater eagerly seizes that double-shell, thrusts his knife forcibly between its valves, gives it a hasty wrench, and extracting daintily the little creature within, instantly swallows it, without consideration. He may think, indeed, that if one oyster be agreeable, two or three dozen will be still more so ; and that there is, there- fore, a large amount of pleasure accessible whenever the head is removed from a barrel of " Milton " or " Colchester natives." But all he does is just to gratify his palate, and to excite or to satisfy the cravings of his stomach. Now I am of opinion that an oyster, only regarded as a thing to be eaten, and having actually but a low place in the ascending series of animals, not only demands, but will richly reward, an enlightened examination. It may not be an ungrateful task, therefore, if I endeavour to inform them what species of animals oysters are. In particular that little succulent shell-fish, that affords to man so much gastronomical enjoyment how born and bred and nurtured ; when and where ; and, lastly, INTRODUCTION. 15 how best it may be eaten, whether in its living and natural state, or having undergone the ordeal of cooking by the skill of a superior artist. Certain of general sympathy, I have poured upon it all the learning I possess upon the subject ; all the taste I am capable of embellishing it with, and all my gastrono- mical experience on this delicious mollusc. In every page I have endeavoured (as it were) to chant in an undertone : " Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my Native ? ' Both to the man of science and to the general reader, I have sought to make these pages, altogether, a pleasant mixture of eating and cooking, and digesting, and zoology, and ancient classics, and modern pleasant supper parties ; I have sought to make the apotheosis of the oyster become almost an epic theme ; and finally (as I have asserted in good faith so) I have sought to prove that, with respect to the oyster, it is good for the unborn child ; good for the child when two years of age ; good for adolescent youth ; good for manhood in its maturity ; and it is not only good, but a strengthener to old age in its inevitable decay. It can make the sick well, render the healthy stouter, prolong the shortening days of senility, and impart an additional charm to youth and beauty. In offering, therefore, the Biography of an Oyster, I say with George Wither, when he presented his book to his sovereign : " Good Sir ! reject it not, although it bring Appearances of some fantastic thing At first unfolding;" while the " caveat" of good Thomas Adams may well be 1 6 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. added : " Do not open it at adventures, and by reading the broken pieces of two or three lines judge it ; but read it through, and then I ask no pardon if thou dislikest it. Farewell." O: CHAPTER I. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. " Each shell, each crawling insect, holds a rank Important in the plan of Him who fram'd This scale of beings ; holds a rank, which lost, Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap Which Nature's self would rue." " THINK you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist, who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning ? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow crystals ? Think you that the rounded rock, marked with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that on this rock a glacier slid a million years ago ? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected 1 8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. plants and insects knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where embedded treasures were found. Whoever at the sea-side has not had a microscope and aquarium have yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the sea-side are." HERBERT SPENCER. WERE I to choose a supplementary title, I should call this work a Zoological Gleaner, wherein the Nineteenth Century culture the literary culture which, according to Matthew Arnold, acquaints itself with "the best that is thought and known in the world' 1 and the scientific culture which, according to Mr. Huxley, is simply " common sense at its best" receives the full measure of the poetic interest which lies in common things. Apart from the love for my subject which has impelled, upheld, and encouraged me to proceed in my self imposed task ; apart from the aim to clothe it in " the best that is thought and known in the world " relative thereto, I have ever had in view the aspiring ambition to make this work readable by all, and at the same time useful to my brother naturalists. Nor have I neglected the advice of Horace : " Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo." In allusion to which says the late distinguished naturalist, John Gwyn Jeffreys : (a} (a) "British Conchology," Introduction, vol. ii. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. I 9 " All that relates to Nature is in itself so delightful, and the pursuit of it elicits so many of our best and truest feelings, that every undertaking of this kind ought to be imbued with the sentiment inculcated by the above maxim, instead of repelling students by too much technicality. "The author and his readers have a joint property in the subject-matter, and they are held together by the same tie of sympathy. ' . Pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.' " Our communion with GOD, through His works, affords one of the purest and most unalloyed of pleasures that is permitted to us in this transitory state. Even the mere contemplation of them, in any of their various aspects, if it is made in a fitting mood, assures us, much more forcibly than human teaching can, that our minds our spirits our souls partake of His eternity, and are imperishable. This idea has pervaded all men and in every age. It is innate and ineradicable. "At the same time it cannot be denied that novels, magazines, and newspapers constitute now-a-days the literature which chiefly occupies the small reading-time of the public, and that scientific books generally are over- looked, unless they advance some startling proposition as to the origin or remote antiquity of our own race. There can be no use, however, in blaming the popular taste ; nor would it be reasonable to expect that every one should follow a scientific path, if his inclinations do not lead him that way. The love of Nature is not confined to any one period, and its votaries must not feel disappointed, should their peculiar studies not be shared by all their contem- poraries." 20 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. The volume whence the latter paragraph of the above extract is taken, was published in 1863, and the reader will agree with me in saying that, had that able author lived at the present time he would have had no need to lament a scarcity of readers of works of science. In this extra- ordinarily advanced, and ever more and more rapidly advancing Scientific Age, it seems almost out of place to quote a paragraph of such tendency, but I have done so simply to show how wonderful has been the progress of Science even since 1863. To say nothing of the Zoological Works published since then, and those that are being published almost every week ; Zoology, in all its branches, is taught in our colleges and in many of our schools. If, then, so happily resultant since the above period, or a decade or two earlier, would it not teach us a profitable lesson to look upon the other side also ? Assuredly so. In- deed, I think "The Trials and Triumphs of Zoology" would form a highly interesting volume, more enthralling than a sensational novel, because more truthful to Nature, and infinitely more instructive because Nature would be the Teacher : but I will not threaten my reader with the task of wading through such a voluminous history; I will, simply, in the words of the translator of Milne Edwards' deservedly famous Manual of Zoology, give him a brief sketch of that branch of Natural History which has attained to such sublime place and glorious consummation among the Sciences, in the hope that it may serve a higher purpose than merely to interest him. " Addressed to professional students (the Manual] and yet not exclusively so, who, partially educated, as the case may be, are about to qualify themselves for embarking in some one or other of the great professions which form the ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 21 occupation of the intellectual world, such studies seem uncalled for as barren of future profitable results. That such a feeling prevails with most professional students using the term professional in its widest acceptation I am well aware ; indeed, as regards the students of one of these learned professions, none can know better, if so well, as I do. The Medical Director of the anatomical studies of many thousands of medical students, I have ever found them adverse to Science, strictly so called ; especially to that branch of Zoological Science termed Natural History. They desire to be practical. Zoology is not a practical art : in this view, therefore, it leads to nothing. "John Hunter had lived and laboured ; his vast ideas, his brilliant discoveries, his views, which seem more like inspirations than the natural result of an industry unsur- passed, lay buried in the hall of a corporate body with whom, as a surgeon, he was accidentally associated ; but he had laboured in vain. His views he placed before the world in the form of a museum, to which none of the labours of men's hands can be compared unless it be, and these no doubt excel, the handiwork of those who carved the Medicean Venus and the Belvidere Apollo. Yet he had laboured in vain, for never, I believe, at any period of its history, was Zoology in a lower condition in Britain than that in which I found it when, returning from France in the summer of 1825, I submitted to a small but select class an outline of those great views which France and Germany had taught me, and which I have continued to meditate and reflect on to the present day. Since that period the educational institutions of the country have become somewhat multiplied, perhaps improved. The pressure of continental opinion has told on Britain, and ere long it is by no means improbable the sciences of simple 22 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. observation may be deemed, if not equal in importance to those great branches of human knowledge wrapped up in the study of numbers and- of literature, at least useful, practically calculated to expand the intellect the first object of all education. " It is a matter not only curious in itself, but fraught with interest to the future historian, to trace, however briefly, the gradual unfolding of modern education, as contrasted not merely with the ancient but with that which, even in my younger days, prevailed everywhere. The interest lies chiefly in contrasting the low estimate which prevailed respecting the nature and character of the sciences of simple observation as compared with true science ; that description of knowledge which admits of a priori reasoning, from that which scarcely, if at all, admits of such. Hence, no doubt, the exclusion of chemistry, anatomy, and natural history, from the curriculum of all Universities, Schools, Colleges, Examining Bodies. But of one thing I am thoroughly convinced. This improved condition of education, even in France, was the result of accident of the accidental appearance in France of a man destined to revolutionize all Zoological Science, viewed under every possible aspect that man was George Cuvier. To be convinced of the truth of this view, we have but rapidly to trace the history of Zoology from the period of the immortal Historia Animahum of Aristotle to that of St. Pierre and Faujas St. Fond. (3.) "Before Rome existed, and before the Iliad was com- posed, Egypt had its Pyramids and its Thebes ; that land (b) See " Great Artists and Great Anatomists." London : Van Voorst. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 23 of practical science bordered on regions of the earth surpassed by none for variety in the forms of animal life. I allude to Africa within the tropics. Nearly every animal susceptible of domestication and useful to man had been appropriated by the Coptic race of Egypt and Nubia ; whilst all the wilde of nature had in succession been exhibited to the nation in various triumphal processions. But all this was merely practical and transitory. It was the same with Rome, Eastern and Western ; no science resulted from it, no Zoological Science, at least ; and the dawn of civilization which re-opened in Europe after the dreadful period of the Dark and Middle Ages, found Zoological and Natural Science precisely where it was left by Pliny a tissue of puerilities, of vague hypotheses, of silly fancies, upon which no critique had ever been exercised. " Notwithstanding the occasional appearance of able men, it continued in this sad state until the close of the seventeenth century. Neither Zoology nor Mineralogy nor Geolo2T had anv real existence. 'OJ 'In 1707, or about that period, two men appeared, simultaneously, destined to rescue Zoology at last from the degraded state to which Pliny and his imitators, abounding most in England, had reduced it. These were Carl Linn6 and the Count de Buffon. To these truly great men we owe the first attempt to remove ihe Natural Sciences from the control of those into whose hands they had fallen. The genius of Linne led to classification, that of Buffon to description ; the one defined, the other described. But the genius of the latter was of a higher cast : it anticipated the future ; and men now read with surprise and learn with astonishment (a surprise and astonishment in which I do 24 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. not partake) (V) that Buffon was no mere compiler, no mere literary man, no mere writer destined to captivate the world by the beauties of a style unmatched, I believe, in France, but a profound philosopher who had already anticipated nearly all the great truths of the transcendental in Science. But neither Buffon nor Linne, whatever might have been the profundity of their views, offered any demon- stration of these views. This is what the world looks for, and rightly expects ; rigid demonstration supported the Newtonian hypothesis, else Newton had written in vain. Palissy, the potter, had said as much as Buffon, but, like him, he had offered no demonstration, and the world looked on them as dreamers dangerous dreamers, of whom the less notice that was taken the better. In Britain, especially, Buffon' s works appeared stripped of all their lofty views, disfigured and degraded ; he passed, even in France, merely as the naturalist who had best described the hot-blooded quadrupeds, as certain mammals were called even in my days ; the bold conjectures of Palissy and of Buffon seemed about to disappear for ever from the field of science. Even Goethe had failed to resuscitate them under other forms. The geological theories of Hutton and Playfair were met successfully by the plausible hypothesis of Werner, when suddenly a man appeared, destined to place Natural Science for ever on a basis which, if not so fixed as the Elements of Euclid, will at least prove as endur- ing. That man was George Cuvier, a German, born on French soil ; an anatomist. This wonderful man, of a rigidly demonstrative turn of mind, when quite young, bethought him of investigating ' the unknown ' in Zoology by means of anatomical research, the only way in which it could be inquired into. Linne and Buffon had described (c) C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., &c., Editor. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 25 and defined the exterior : * I will investigate,' he said, ' the interior ' : they ought to correspond : there must be inti- mate relations between them : anatomical co-relations. Seemingly, and without being aware of it, he had discovered a new element of research descriptive anatomy ; not the vague comparative anatomy of Perrault or Daubenton, but minute descriptive anatomy worthy of Hunter and of him- self. " Yet he was very young, and knew nothing of Hunter and but little of Daubenton. Genius directed his steps, that genius which, when it appears, and happily escapes the crushing influences ' of established socialisms ' is sure to form a new era. Like most of the great men of his day (products of the French Revolution) he had outstripped in his merest youth the age he lived in, and rapidly shot beyond that which was to follow. " Cuvier's early pursuits were the rectification, by means of anatomy, of the classifications of Buffon and Linne ; but he quickly, as it were instinctively, passed beyond this comparatively narrow field into one which has no limits. Whilst pursuing his enquiries on the structure of the inver- tebrate kingdom, he soon saw that the animal forms he dissected differed specifically and generically from those fossil forms which lay around him. Palissy, the potter, had seen the same ; Buffon had announced the fact : they were declared to be dreamers. Cuvier offered to mankind the Ossemens Fossiles in proof that they were so, and from that moment to the present day few have had the hardihood to deny the proof : none but those who regard the New- tonian demonstration as an idle unprofitable dream. " The importance thus given to Zoological studies and pursuits by the application of the anatomical method in 2 6 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Zoology, would have commenced and terminated with Cuvier but for this one circumstance he had created Geology, Palaeontology ; that last and most wonderful science, which seems to have no limits. He had shown that without a knowledge of the extinct Zoologies there can be no Geology, properly speaking : none at least likely to interest man. Now this extinct Zoology cannot be well understood, if at all, without a knowledge of the living Zoology, that being the term and mean of compari- son. Thus was Zoology forced at last into the Schools, Universities, and Collegiate Institutions (dJ] " The necessity for this was first seen and admitted in France, from whence it naturally was imported into Eng- land, where Cuvier and his supposed views had become fashionable ; the single geologist at the Board of Ordnance, McCulloch, was slowly replaced by a body of scientific men, each teaching a different department of Natural Science ; out of this arose a School of Practical Geology, and various chairs in a similar direction came to be founded in Collegiate Educational Institutions. The illustrious Sedgwick, to whom Geology unquestionably owes its present position in Britain, set an example in Cambridge which cannot be too much praised nor too closely followed. "Thus originated, the gradual introduction of zoolog- ical science into the curriculum of study for university honours demanded of all, I presume, who mean to follow (d) Cuvier had shown Anatomy to be the only safe basis for testing Zoology, and a comparison of it with the extinct the only guide to Palaeontology ; it may be, and has been, called an empirical method, by which I presume is meant that the method is not strictly scientific. I have all my life been of this opinion, but the method notwithstanding has led to icsults second only, if second, to the Newtonian discoveries. Translator's Note. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 27 out a professional vocation in France : England slowly follows." Such is a hasty sketch of the state of Zoological Science at the beginning of the present century. I need not trouble the reader either with account or description of the mighty seven-league strides we have made since then, not only in Zoology, but in the practical Arts and Sciences generally ; nor need I remind him that, in many respects, our progress has been and is so astonishing that the mind becomes bewildered in the contemplation of the possible achievements of Science in the future ; but, in connection with the subject of this chapter, let us, by the descriptive aid of an able author, glance for a moment at the backwardness of the past century in contrast with the advancement of the present. " One of the differences between the eighteenth century culture and the culture of the nineteenth century is the advantage which the latter has of being able to see more deeply into the poetry of common things. And by this we do not mean that sentimental reflectiveness over daisies, primroses, dandelions, and peasant children, which Words- worth found necessary to employ in his endeavours to bring us back to Nature, nor that the eighteenth century was without its interpreters of this kind of poetry. For the eighteenth century had a Cowper, who saw deeply into the poetry of common things, and there were certain Essayists then also who could preserve for us the very at- mosphere in which a simple country gentleman, Sir Roger de Coverley by name, moved and displayed his little pecu- liarities. But in saying that the culture of the nineteenth century has the advantage of being able to see more deeply into the poetry of common things than the culture of the 28 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. eighteenth, we merely mean that science has so widened the bounds of knowledge about common things, and deepened the interest in them, that the ordinary all-round culture of to-day, even when not particularly or very con- sciously poetical in its spirit, is more deeply imbued with the poetry of common things than the best culture of the eighteenth century It was not given to the man of culture in the eighteenth century to know the thousandth part of the interest which lies in the commonest objects a drop of water, a snow-flake, a glacier, rounded rock, a fossil, a plant, or an insect. ' A primrose by a river's brim, A simple primrose was to him.' And it may have been this much more than by the power of memory and association it suggested thoughts which were denied, perhaps, to the next observer. But to the man of all-round culture to-day the man of insight as well as knowledge in the commonest weed or clump of moss there lies a mine of historical and poetical wealth. And to the study of the commonest objects what guidance he has ! A Kingsley to teach him the way to study the pebbles of the street, the slates of the roof, and the coal in the mine ; a Darwin to show how the earth-worm has contributed to agriculture ; a Faraday to make the common candle shine more wonderfully than the genii's lamp ; a Lubbock, to observe the ways of the ant ; and a Huxley, to surround the cray-fish with the deepest intellectual interest. And to the list of science popularisers may we not add the Canadian names of Sir William Dawson and Grant Allen ? " But if the nineteenth centurv has these advantages, it - O must be remembered that only culture the literary culture ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 29 which, according to Matthew Arnold, acquaints itself with ' the best that is thought and known in the world,' and the scientific culture which, according to Professor Huxley, is simply ' common sense at its best ' receives the full measure of the poetic interest which lies in common things. The man of science only, who is satisfied with merely dis- secting and classifying a flower, misses as much as the man of sentiment only, to whom a flower may or may not sug- gest thoughts through memory or association. " Perhaps one of the best examples we have of the happy combination of literary with scientific culture where literature has been studied for its own sake, and where science has been studied for its own sake is to be found in the philological works of Max Miiller. Max Miillerhas studied words in much the same way as Agassiz studied fish bones, or as Boyd Dawkins hunted English caves. He has analysed them and traced them to their roots ' dead from the waist down,' but by the power of literary culture, the power of knowing ' the best that is thought and known in the world,' he has been able to associate the barest skeletons of words with man's history with his struggles, his development, his achievements, his hopes, his fears, and his religions." In concluding this Chapter, it only remains for me to touch briefly upon the object and utility of Natural History. Natural History is that science which treats of the structure of bodies spread over the surface of the globe, or forming its mass the phenomena exhibited by these bodies, the characters by which they may be distinguished from each other, and the part they play in the entire crea- tion. Its range is immense, and its importance is not 30 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. inferior to its extent. Some but little acquainted with science, see in natural history merely a collection of anec- dotic facts, more calculated to excite the curiosity than to exercise the understanding ; or a dry study of technical terms and arbitrary classifications. Such an opinion is based on ignorance : and the utility of the study of natural history cannot fail to be recognised by all who possess even the preliminary ideas of the science. The grand and harmonious view it presents of Nature, whose bean ideal is so much superior to that of human invention, tends to elevate the mind to lofty and sound thoughts. The knowledge of ourselves and of surrounding objects, is not given merely to satisfy the desire for learning which develops itself always according as the intelligence enlarges; it forms a necessary basis to many other studies, and is eminently calculated to give to the judgment that rectitude in the absence of which the most brilliant qualities lose their value, and in the course of life lead the mind astray. On the other hand, to be convinced of the practical importance of the natural sciences, we have only to look to geology and mineralogy, and the services they have rendered to industry ; to botany, and to the myriads of beauteous and useful plants it describes ; and to horticul- ture, of which it is the guide ; to recollect the animals to which we owe wool, silk, honey which lend us that power which man so often requires, or which, far from being useful to us, threaten our harvests with destruction ; lastly, to consider the long catalogue of human infirmities, and to reflect on the dangerous character of that medicine which is not based on a scientific knowledge of the human structure. ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 31 But the utility of these sciences does not stop here ; in an educational point of view, their study accustoms the mind to proceed from effect to cause, testing each hypo- thesis by an appeal to facts. Finally, before all other studies, that of Natural History trains the mind to method, that part of logic without which all investigation is labori- ous, every exposition obscure, (e) (e) " Manual of Zoology." Milne Edwards. CHAPTER II. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. THE ANCIENTS OYSTERS A GREEK AND ROMAN LUXURY SERGIUS GRATA, AND THE OYSTER-BEDS OF BALE IMMENSE CONSUMP- TION AT ROME FAILURE OF THE CIRCEAN AND LUCRINIAN OYSTER-BEDS UNDER DOMITIAN, AND INTRODUCTION OF RUTU- PIANS FROM BRITAIN AGRICOLA, CONSTANTINE, AND HELENA ATHENIAN OYSTERS, AND ARISTIDES. WHERE do we first find historical mention of oysters ? Did the ancient Egyptian ever press between his teeth the dainty mollusc ? Does the oyster figure on the monu- ments of that remarkable, people ? Although, as Sir G. Wilkinson tells us, the Egyptians were not contented with the abundance of fish afforded by the Nile, but constructed within their grounds spacious sluices or ponds for fish, like the vivaria of the Romans, where they fed them for the table, and where they amused themselves by angling and the dexterous use of the trident, it does not appear that they had any knowledge of ostreoculture, and it is doubt- ful whether these molluscs ever formed part of their food. " Of the division of the animal kingdom, the mollusca, containing shell-fish, nothing is known which connects any of them with the religion of Egypt." (a) (a) "Ancient. Egyptians," vol. 3, p. 53, and vol. 5, p. 125. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 33 Though oysters and other conchiferous molluscs were not disallowed as food for the ancient Jews by any precise definition in the Levitical law, there can be no doubt that they would be regarded as "abominable things." M. Dabry de Thersant, in a number of the "China Review," as quoted in the " Flight of the Lapwing," states that artificial oyster-beds were formed in China long before they are known to have existed amongst the Romans, and, while in Europe essays and pamphlets are being written on the theory of the subject, the practical Chinese have been obtaining good results for the last 1800 years, notwith- standing the fact that they have no clear ideas as to the nature of the oyster or its means of reproduction. It has been supposed that Homer alludes to oysters in the following lines, where Patroclus insults the charioteer of Hector, as he falls from his chariot: "Ye gods, how active the man is, how gracefully he dives ; if he were anywhere in the fish-producing sea, this fellow might satisfy many diving for oysters." -//. 16, 745-7. But it is very doubtful whether the Greek word tethea denotes oysters ; it occurs nowhere else in Homer, nor does the poet ever make use of the ordinary word for an oyster, namely, ostreon or ostreion. It is true that Athenaeus says that the tethos and the ostreon are the same ; but his asser- tion cannot be reconciled with other passages where the words occur. Thus Archestratus of Syracuse no mean j authority on everything that relates to fish speaks of Abydos as the best place for ostreia and Chalcedon for tethea, in the very same book : " Aenus has mussels fine ; Abydos too Is famous for its oysters ; Parium produces Crabs, the bears of the sea, and Mitylene periwinkles. Ambracia in all kinds of fish abounds, B 34 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. And the boar-fish sends forth ; and in its narrow strait Messene cherishes the largest cockles. In Ephesus you shall catch chemae, which are not bad ; And Chalcedon will give you oysters." (b) Aristotle has given us so precise a description of the tethea as to leave not a shadow of doubt that the tunicated molluscs, or ascidia, are denoted by the term. Dr. Schliemann found oyster-shells in large numbers in the ruins of all the five pre-historic settlements at His- sarlik, showing that oysters must have been a favourite food with all the early settlers, and their abundance in the first and oldest city is confirmed by Professor R. Vir- chow. As the old Greeks ate sea-urchins, limpets, sea- anemones, balani, &c., we see no reason why they should not have swallowed tunicated molluscs : a species of this family is at present eaten in South America ; when boiled or roasted it is said to taste like lobster. Aristotle was well acquainted with oysters, but nowhere lets us know whether he was ever in the habit of tickling his philosophic throat with the dainty morsels. He uses the term ostrea, sometimes to denote conchiferous molluscs generally, at other times oysters proper. In the concluding chapters of the Timaeus, in which Plato inculcates the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, after having disposed of the probable future estate of those men who have lived effeminately they were to be changed into women and those who have passed their time frivolously -they were to be changed into birds and those who had paid no attention to philosophy they were to be turned (b} Athenaeus " Deipnosophists," vol. I, bk. 3, p. 154. (c} "Troja," by Dr. Henry Schliemann, see note 6, p. 285. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 35 into beasts assigns the state of fishes and oysters and other aquatic creatures to those people who were thoroughly ignorant and without thought. In the Phaedrus (d} he speaks of the soul being fettered to the body like an oyster to its shell, (e) The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters ; but then they knew nothing of Britain beyond its name, and looked upon it in very much the same light as we now regard the regions of the Esquimaux ; and as to the little dabs of watery pulp found in the Mediterranean, what are they but oysters in name ? Indeed, the best use the Athenians could make of them was to use their shells to ostracise any good citizen who, like Aristides, was too virtuous for a " Greek." However, on the plea that oysters are oysters, we presume for it could not be on account of their flavour " oysters," says the author of the " Tabella Cibaria," " were held in great esteem by the Athenians." No doubt, when Constantine moved the seat of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, he did not forget to have his Rutupians regularly forwarded ; so, perhaps, after all, it was our " Natives ' which thus found their way into Greece, that they delighted in ; and if so, the good taste of the Athenians need not be called into question ; but, as in literature and the arts, in oyster- eating too, it deserves to be held up to commendation. (/"). There were other places from whence oysters were procured, and Mucianus speaks with rapture of those found at Cyzicus, a town in Asia Minor, on the shores of the Sea of Marmora, the ruins now called by the Turks, Bal Kiz. He describes them as larger than those of Lake (d) Phaedrus, 30 c. (e) "Edinburgh Review," 1868. (/) "The Oyster." B 2 36 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Lucrinus ; fresher than those of the British coasts ; sweeter than those of Medulae (the district in the vicinity of Bordeaux, now called Medoc) ; more tasty than those of Ephesus ; more plump than those of Lucus ; less slimy than those of Coryphas (a town of Mysia, opposite Lesbos) ; more delicate than those of Istria, and whiter than those of Circeii (a town of Latium). But, on the question of the best kinds, Pliny does not agree with Mucianus, though so high an authority for the latter appears to have been a sort of Frank Buckland in his day, as an authority on oysters. " Notwithstanding this opinion," he says, " it is quite certain that no oysters can compare with those of Circeii in point of sweetness and delicacy of flavour." The Romans, it is clear, paid considerable attention to the cultivation of oysters, and consumed vast quantities of them ; and although there was some difference of opinion as to their wholesomeness as food, on the whole Roman taste was decidedly in their favour. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca, Pliny, Aetius, and the old Greek doctor, Oribasius, whom Julian the Apostate delighted to honour, and other men of taste amongst the ancients, have enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster ; and was it not to Sergius Grata that we owe our present oyster-beds ; for he it was who introduced layers or stews for oysters at Baiae, the Brighton of ancient Rome, as we have them at present. The author of that highly instructive and amusing * ' J ) Oysters were no doubt in ancient times, as now, often eaten at supper. Juvenal speaks of the "Venus Ebria" supping on large oysters and strong Falernian wine ; "Who at deep midnight on fat oysters sups And froths with unguents her Falernian cups." (Sat. 6, 300.) Of all ancient devourers of oysters, Vitellius "the beastly Vitellius," as Gibbon calls him appears to have been the greatest. That Emperor is said to have eaten oysters nearly all day long, and to have swallowed as many as a thousand at a sitting ; and though there must be some exaggeration here, yet when we remember the disgusting habit practised by the Romans, and notably by Vitellius, of whose gormandising powers Suetonius writes, "Facile (0) Deipnosoph, 4, 8. (p) " Edinburgh Review," 1868. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 47 omnibus sufficiens vomitando consuetudine," it is easy to understand bow vast numbers might have been consumed by one oyster-eater. The " dull, unrelenting Tiberius," " the furious Caligula," "the profligate and cruel Nero," were all probably consumers of oysters to a large amount. J. J * Tiberius, or, as he was sometimes jocularly called, " Biberius," from his drinking propensities, actually presented a person of the name of Asellius Sabinus with 200 sesterces for a dialogue, in which he represents a contest between mushrooms, beccaficos, oysters, and thrushes, as to which has the best claim to superiority. " When the Emperor Trajan was in Parthia," as we are told by Athenaeus, " at a distance of many days' journey from the sea, Apicius Coelius," who must not be confounded with the writer of a book of cookery which j bears his name, "sent him fresh oysters, which he had kept so by a clever contrivance of his own ; real oysters, not like the sham anchovies which the cook of Nicomedes, King of the Bithynians, made in imitation of the real fish, and set before the King, when he expressed a wish for anchovies, he, too, at the time being a long way from the sea.' " This mode," says Mr. M. S. Lovell, in his valuable and interesting " Edible Mollusca," in allusion to Apicius' *' clever contrivance," " may possibly have been the same as that which is practised in Italy at the present day, where, as Poli tells us, they are carried from Tarentum to Naples, in bags, tightly packed with snow, which not only by its coolness preserves them, but also, by preventing them from opening their bivalves, enables them to retain in the shells sufficient moisture to preserve their lives for a long period, (q] (q) Poli, " Testacea Utriusque Siciliae." 48 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. But the oyster had its detractors amongst the ancients, as well as amongst ourselves. Seneca who so admirably praises the charms of poverty, yet left prodigious wealth behind him ; Seneca, the wise and moderate, who ate several hundreds of them every week, thus launches forth against many good things, and the mud-fattened mollusc amongst the number: " Dii boni, quantum hominem unus venter exercet ! Quid ? tu illos boletos, voluptarium venenum, nihil occulti operis judicas facere, etiamsi prae- sentanei non furant ? Quid ? tu illam asstivam nivem non putas callum jecinoribus obducere ? Quid ? ilia ostrea, inertissimam carnem, cceno saginatam, nihil existimas limosae gravitatis inferre ?" (r] In another letter he says that, after having listened to Attilus declaiming against vices and follies, he for ever renounced oysters and mushrooms, for such things cannot properly be called food, and are mere provocatives of the appetite, causing those who are already full to eat more, a thing no doubt very pleasant to gluttons, who like to stuff themselves with such food as very readily slips down and very readily returns. $ Cicero did not hesitate to confess that he had a special predilection for oysters ; but he adds, that he could renounce them without any difficulty ; which, by the way, he might as well have told to the Marines, if they were in existence in his day, for all the credence this remark of his has gained from posterity. We prefer Horace, who in every passage honestly makes known his love for oysters, and eats them himself with as much gusto as he extols them to others. Care- (/-) Epistle, 95. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 49 fully, too, does he note down from whom he procured them, and the name of the famous gourmet who at the first bite was able to tell whether an oyster came from Circeii or the Lucrine Sea, or from any part of Natolia. The ancients, our teachers in all arts, but especially in aesthetics, did not bolt the oyster, but masticated it. With true Epicurean tact, they always extracted the full enjoyment out of the good things set before them. Not so we ; most of us now bolt them ; but this is a mistake, for the oyster has a much finer flavour, and is far more nourishing, when well masticated. The Romans needed not even the use of their teeth to tell them from whence the oyster came ; a mere look sufficed to distinguish it, as may be seen' in the following lines ascribed to Lucilius :- " When I but see the oyster's shell, I look and recog- nize the river, marsh or mud, where it was raised." Nor was this so very difficult a matter, for the shell, no less than the animal itself, as has already been shown, exhibits the nature of the food upon which the oyster has fed. From the time that the preference was given to the British mollusc, thousands of slaves were employed on the shores of the Atlantic, in procuring the oysters, which in Rome were paid for by their weight in gold. The expenses were so great that the censors felt themselves obliged to interfere. Not content with getting their oysters from distant shores, they had means by which to preserve them for some time, in hot weather ; for which purpose, as we see in the Pompeian model-house , at the Crystal Palace, their domiciles were furnished with a receptacle for water ; for with those famous epicures the water-vivary was an essential necessary for the preservation of living fish, and 50 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. all that was necessary was to substitute sea-water for fresh, (j) Various ancient authors were of opinion that the moon had peculiar influence over oysters and other shell-fish. Thus Lucilius, in one of his fragments, says : " Luna alit ostrea, et implet echinos, muribu' fibras Et pecui addit." Similarly Manilius : " Si submersa fretis concharum et carcere clausa, Ad Lunse niotum variant animalia corpus." Horace, too, was of the same opinion : " Lubrica nascentes implent conchylia lunae." (t} Nor did the idea prevail only with the poets ; Cicero accepted it as a well-ascertained fact. " Ostreis et con- chyliis," he says, " omnibus contingit, ut cum luna pariter crescant pariterque decrescant." () The following story is told of Aulus Gellius : " The poet Annianus, on his Falerian estate, was wont to spend the time of vintage in a jovial and agreeable way, and he had invited me and several other friends to pass those days with him. When we were at supper there, a large quantity of oysters was brought from Rome ; but when they were set before us, they proved, though many, yet all poor and thin. The moon (remarked Annianus) is now in truth waning, and on that account the oyster, like other things, is lean and void of juice. We asked what other things waste when the moon is old ? Do you remember, said he, what Lucilius says : ' Those very things which grow with the moon's increase pine away as it wanes ; the (s) " The Oyster." (t) Sat. 2, 4. See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. 2, cap. 41. (u) De Div. 2, 14. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 51 eyes of cats become fuller or smaller according to the changes of the moon.' But that is still more surprising which I have read in Plutarch, that the onion becomes green and flourishing as the moon wastes away, and dries up again as the moon increases ; and this is the cause, say the Egyptian priests, why the Pelusians do not eat the onion ; because it alone of all potherbs has its turns of diminishinsr and increasing contrary to those of the moon." o j It is curious to observe that this folly about the moon's j influence on oysters continued to form a part of the popular creed even as late as 1666; for in the "Philosophical Transactions ' : of that year travellers to India "are soli- cited to inquire whether the shell-fishes that are in these parts plump and in season at the full moon, and lean and out of season at the new, are found to have contrary con- stitutions in the East Indies ;" to which the answer was returned, " I find it so here, by experience at Batavia in oysters and crabs." Even at the present day the Tarentines declare that oysters are fattest during the full moon, and they are also fully persuaded that the moon-beams have a pernicious effect upon sea-fish ; therefore they cover over fish taken by moonlight, lest they should decompose, (v) The Romans, like ourselves, were in the habit of sending presents of oysters to their friends, who, it is probable, returned the compliment in the shape of a boar's head, fat ducks, or some other welcome produce of the farm. Ausonius wrote a very amusing letter to his friend Theon, who had sent him only thirty oysters as a present : " Accepi, dilecte Theon, numerabile munus. Verum quot fuerint, subjecta monosticha signant." (v) " The Fisheries of the Adriatic," by G. S. Faber. 52 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. The oysters were fine, but so few, so very easily counted they were just three times his ten fingers, or Gorgon's heads if you multiply them by ten, or " Twice fifteen and nothing more, Bakers' dozens two, and four, Twenty-two plus eight, and then Two full scores, deducting ten." Martial ridicules Papilus for dining so niggardly him- self, and yet making expensive presents to friends for the sake of ostentation. Oysters are enumerated amongst the dainties :- " For thyself if the tail of a pilchard thou broil, And on festivals swill a bean soup without oil ; Teat, boar, hare, champinions and oysters and mullet Thou bestow'st my poor Pap has nor palate nor gullet." (Epigram 7, 78.) In another place he speaks of the dark beards of oysters, " Et ostreorum rap ere lividos cirros " (Ep. 7, 20), as one of the dishes which the gluttonous Sanctra was fond of pilfering off the table. % Oyster-shells were used by the ancient Romans in medicine and as a cement ; cuttle-fish bones and oyster- shells finely reduced to powder to cure wounds and ulcers, eruptions on infants' skins, chilblains, and as tooth-powder. Palladius (20) recommends a cement made of figs, pitch, and powdered oyster-shells for repairing baths. (w) De Re Rust I, 41. CHAPTER III. MODERN HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. FALL OF THE RUTUPIAN SUPREMACY LOUIS IV. AND WILLIAM OF NORMANDY CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, AND REVIVAL OF OYSTER-EATING IN ENGLAND WALLFLEET OYSTERS ANCIENT CRIES OF LONDON OYSTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. BISHOP SPRATT. THE POET COWPER ON OYSTERS. WITH the fall of the Roman Empire came also the fall of the Rutupian supremacy ; and even the Roman Britons, i driven into Brittany and the mountains of Wales by their truculent Saxon persecutors, had to forego these luxuries of the table, unless, perhaps, Prince Arthur and his Knights may now and then have opened a bushel, when they were seated over their wine, in that free and easy circle which has become so celebrated as to have formed a literature of its own. (a} Sharon Turner, in his " History of the Anglo-Saxons from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest," tells us that in the dialogues composed by Elfric to instruct the Anglo-Saxon youths in the Latin language, which are yet preserved to us in the MSS. in the Cotton Library, there (a) The Oyster, &c. 54- OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. is some curious information concerning the manners and trade of our ancestors. In one colloquy the fisherman is asked, " What do you take in the sea?" " Herrings and salmons, porpoises, sturgeons, oysters and crabs, mussels, winkles, cockles, flounders, plaice, lobsters, and such like." Necklaces of oyster-shells, limpets, and other shells, strung together on fibre or sinews, have been and are found in early British and Saxon graves, (b) From the fourth century, to which Macrobius brought J ' o us, to the reign of Louis IV., of France, the history of the oyster is a blank ; but that king revived the taste for our favourite, and during his captivity in Normandy brought it again into request with his conqueror, Duke William ; so, when the Normans invaded England under William the Conqueror the descendant of that Duke William, little (b) In Britten's " History of Dorset," mention is made of the finding of a small urn in a barrow in the parish of Lul worth, about two inches high, and one inch in diameter, neatly covered with the shell of a limpet ; but it was quite empty. Beads made from the columella of Stronibus pi pas are found in O O sepulchral remains in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. So we are told by Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his " Prehistoric Remains," while the author of " Flint Chips" tells us that the shells of the Dentalium made into beads, have been met with in tumuli in Ohio. And Mr. T. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S., author of " A History of Egyptian Mummies," states that in Egypt, on the mummies of children, necklaces of natural shells, or shells figured in gold, silver, precious stones, &c., are found chiefly, according to Passalacqua, met with on those of young girls. Finally, as a further illustration of this custom of the ancients still in vogue amongst barbarous nations, Mr. V. Ball, in his " Jungle Life in India," informs us that the women of the Andaman Islands wear various ornaments, and the most extraordinary are the skulls of their defunct relatives festooned with strings of shells, which some of them carry suspended from their necks. MODERN HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 55 more than a century later they were not long in finding out how much Kentish and Essex oysters were preferable to those of France. Since then the oyster has held its own against all comers, as one of the most welcome accessories to the table of rich and poor, and has been protected in its rights and immunities by various Acts of Parliament. Among the authors who have written upon the natural history of the oyster since printing was invented, I believe Gesner is the first. The title-page of his work, liber iv. " Qui est de Piscium et Aquatilium Animantium Natura," bears the following letters as a date CO O CHIL, an d was printed at Frankfort; the other volume, "De Avibus," is dated 1535. Rondeletius and Belon, both of whom are quoted, bear dates, the former 1558, and the latter 1555, supposing my copies to be the first editions. ( ears smaller. Length cry, breadth 0*7. HABITAT : Cornwall (Hockin). F. Monte Mario (Rigacci) ; E. Mediterranean electric-telegraph cable, at a depth of over 1000 f. (Milne-Edwards). Shetland, Skye, Larne (co. Antrim), Birterbuy Bay (co. Galway), Guernsey (J. G. J.) ; Exmouth (Clark); in gravelly sand, 18-80 fathoms. It is a rare species. The variety is remarkable. . The foreign range of P. Testa extends from Norway to Algeria and the ^Esrean This j O O beautiful species differs from P. tigrinus, with which it is sometimes found, in the following particulars :--The shell is broader, flatter, and thinner ; the ribs, when they occur, are scaly or prickly ; the punctures are very strongly marked, and arranged in squares ; the beaks are much less prominent, and raised ; the ears are not so unequal ; and the inside margin is seldom crenulated. Forbes and Hanley considered it to be a variety of P. striatus ; but Malm has satisfactorily shown some of the points of differ- ence between these two species. There is no intermediate form. P. Testa has, indeed, some of the sculpture of P. tigrinus and the shape of P. striatus, but the colouring of the first is more bright and vivid than that of the other two. Some specimens are perfect gems. 7. P. STRIATUS, Miiller. P. striatus, Mull. Zool. Dan. Prodromus, p. 248, No. 2994 > F. and H. 2, p. 281, pi. 51, f. 1-4, and (animal) pi. S. f. 2. BODY whitish, irregularly streaked lengthwise with opaque white lines : mantle edged with white, and having an outer fringe of extensile white cirri : ocelli 25 in num- 1 82 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM, her, blue-black with crimson centres ; behind them is an inner fringe of short white cirri : gills also furnished with 20 reddish-brown ocelli, each of which surmounts the crest of a leaflet. SHELL resembling that of P. Testce in shape ; but it is rather larger, thinner, and more fragile, and the sculpture (especially of the upper valve) is very different. In the present species it consists of numerous fine ribs, which radiate from the beaks to the front and side margins, and have their crests thickly set with short vaulted spines or prickles ; besides these riblets, the surface is closely covered with extremely minute and irregular longitudinal striae, which are raised and divaricate or become forked, but they are never reticulated or punctured, as in P. Testce. The colour is of a more sombre hue. The left ear of the upper valve hangs down much lower, and is nearly entire instead of being deeply notched, as in that species ; and the byssal sinus is consequently larger. Length 0*725, breadth cry. HABITAT : Plymouth (Jordan) ; F. Scandinavia and Italy ; ! E. Mediterranean and Adriatic ; ! seas of Shetland, Scotland ; north-eastern coasts of England ; north, east, south, and west of Ireland ; Isle of Man, and Scilly ; in 12-90 fathoms, hard ground. Morch has procured it from the Faroe Isles, and Danielssen from West Finmark. It also inhabits other parts of the Scandinavian coast. McAndrew has dredged it in Vigo Bay, at a depth of 1 5 fathoms, and Philippi describes it as a Calabrian fossil, under the name of P. rimulosus. The shell is sometimes distorted. The pallial ocelli or eyelets are of unequal size and irregularly placed ; they gleam with an opaline lustre. Living specimens which I dredged in 85 fathoms had the VARIETIES OF OYSTERS. 183 shells highly coloured and streaked. Mr. Norman has noticed, in his list of Clyde Mollusca, that the shells of this species lose their azure blue colour after being kept in a closed cabinet. This is remarkable, because certain colours of shells and other animals (e.g., pink and reddish- brown) fade, and even vanish, unless the light is excluded. In the British Museum it has been found necessary to replace, every two or three years, fresh specimens of many delicate tinted butterflies exposed in the show-cases ; and in the museum at Amsterdam the shells are always kept covered, to prevent loss of colour. P. striatus attains a greater size than P. Testa. My largest specimen is about an inch long, and a trifle more than nine-tenths of an inch in breadth. The striae in the present species are raised and irregular, and they are never punctured or reticulate. The different substance of the shell, the style and intensity of coloration, and the comparative size of the left ear of the upper valve are also notable marks of distinction- Even the fry of each species exhibits its own peculiar characters. It is the P. fuci of Gmelin, P. reticulatus of Chemnitz, P. Landsburgi of Forbes, and P. aculeatus of Jeffreys. 8. P. SIMILIS, Laskey. P. si?nilis, Lask. Mem. Wern. Soc. i, p. 387, t. 8, f, 8 ; F. and H. 2, p. 293, pi. 52, f. 6, and (animal) pi. S. f. i. BODY very variable in colour, often pale yellow or whitish, with brown streaks and blotches : mantle fawn- coloured, with patches and lines of orange and black : cirri short ; some are white and others brown, a few bein2f o thicker and longer than the rest, and mottled with milk- white : ocelli 6-8 in front and nearly twice as many in a 184 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. second row behind ; the former are comparatively larger, pearly, and ringed with jet : foot of a brilliant orange- colour or white. SHELL nearly circular but expanding towards each side, where it forms an obtuse angle, and rhomboidal behind in consequence of the projection of the ears, equilateral, depressed, extremely thin and rather glossy ; lower valve considerably smaller than the other, and to some extent enclosed within it : sculpture, fine and close-set concentric lines only : colour yellowish or milk-white, mottled with reddish-brown or flake-white spots or streaks, and often marked by longitudinal white rays or transverse zigzag lines of a vandyke pattern : margins very thin, semicircular in front and sloping about halfway on each side, at an angle of 45 degrees, to the beaks ; byssal slope not toothed or serrate : beaks small but prominent : ears long and drooping, nearly square-set, those on the byssal side being the smallest, rounded at the corner ; byssal notch slight : hinge-line straight, two-fifths of the breadth of the shell : cartilage small : ligament so thin as to be almost impercep- > tible : hinge-plate broad and smooth ; transverse rib slight and scarcely raised : inside pearly, minutely striate length- wise : muscular scars distinct. Length 0*285, breadth o'3- HABITAT : Shetland, 95 f. F. N. U. Germany and Italy. E. Loffoden L, 300 f. (Sars) ; Arcachon (Lafont) ; ! Jamaica (Barrett).! Sparingly occurring, although grega- rious, on all our coasts, in muddy sand, at 2-82 fathoms. Glacial deposits, Fifeshire (Fleming) ; Coralline Crag (S. Wood). Its distribution extends from Finmark to the ^Egean, and both in northern and southern localities it appears to have a considerable range of depth, viz., 15-200 fathoms, Upper Norway, according to McAndrew and VARIETIES OF OYSTERS. 185 Barrett, and 27-185 fathoms in the JEgean, according to Forbes. Norwegian specimens collected by Professor Sars are of an extraordinarily lars;e size. J O The animal as well as the shell of this tiniest of scal- lops is very lovely. If, when fresh caught, put into a glass of sea-water, it flits about like a bat for a long time, and then fastens itself to the side of the vessel by a fine and atmost transparent byssus. After a while it slips its cable and resumes its voyage of discovery, until it becomes apparently exhausted by the fruitless search, and lies down on one side. My largest specimens measure only 0.35 by 0.375. The breadth invariably exceeds the length. For the discovery of this species science is indebted to the late Captain Laskey, although he described and figured it from a right valve only, not having at that time obtained a perfect specimen. It is the Ostrea tumida of Turton, P. pygmaeus of Von Minister, P. minimus of Sars, and P. Foresti of Martin. The P. G roe.nl andicus of Sowerby (P. vitreus of Dr. Gray but not of Chemnitz) resembles the present species in nearly every respect but that of size. It may be an arctic variety of P. similis or (more probably) a direct and "pur-sang" descendant from the original stock. B. Upper valve nearly flat and concave towards the beak ; hinge-line ribbed obliquely. 9. P. MAXIMUS, Linne. Ostrea jnaxima, Linn. Syst. Nat., p. 1 144. P. maximus, F. and H. 2, p. 296, pi. 49. BODY pinkish-white above, and bright red or pink in front : mantle variously marbled with brown, black, and white : cirri on the inner margin of the mantle short, white, and arranged in a single row ; those on the fixed or exterior 1 86 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. margin are of different lengths, and arranged in three irregular rows : ocelli of a greenish-blue or purplish hue, forming two rows, and numbering from 30-35 ; those in the front row are considerably larger than the rest, and correspond with the ribs of the shell : foot snow-white, short, grooved, with a spatulate extremity. SHELL nearly circular, except behind, where the pro- jecting ears give a square outline, equilateral above and nearly so beneath ; upper valve slightly raised in the middle, and smaller than the lower valve, which is very convex ; it is thick and solid, glossy in the umbonal region, but elsewhere of a dull hue: sculpture, 15 or 16 ribs in each valve, which radiate from the beaks and are strong, and nearly as broad as the interstices between them ; the ribs and interstices are scored by a few parallel striae, which are more numerous on the lower than the upper valve ; the whole surface is covered with minute and close-set thin concentric plates, which are imbricated or overlap one another like roof tiles : colour reddish-brown on the upper valve, with a yellow tint on the lower valve ; both valves are sometimes beautifully mottled or marked with bands, zigzag streaks, and spots of burnt umber or bright yellow, suffused with a delicate pink hue ; occasion- ally, but rarely, the colour is white, with an orange tint at the beaks : margins semicircular in front, and sloping at the distance of about one-fourth from the hinge-line, at an angle of 30 degrees to the beaks ; byssal slope not notched or serrate : beaks small and not prominent in full-grown specimens : ears exactly equal on the upper valve, and nearly so on the other valve, furnished with a few ribs or striae which radiate from the beaks ; byssal notch closed in the adult state : hinge-line straight, rather more than half VARIETIES OF OYSTERS. 187 the breadth of the shell : cartilage large, thick, and strong : ligament narrow and rather slight : hinge-plate broad, closely and microscopically striate across ; transverse rib strong, and raised on each side of the cartilage-pit ; in the lower or deeper valve are two or three short oblique ribs, which diverge from above the cartilage-pit towards the sides, in wave-like lines : inside glossy, tinged more or less deeply with reddish-brown, fluted as in P. opercularis, and having similar shoulders or ledges on the posterior slopes, to prevent contact at the hinge-area : muscular scars well marked, especially on the upper valve. Length 4*5, breadth 5. HABITAT : F. Sweden and Italy. E. Spain, from 4 f. downwards (Hidalgo). Nearly everywhere, and often gregarious on banks, in 7-78 fathoms. It is also not uncommon in all our upper tertiaries, both new and old. Its foreign range comprises all the sea-bed lying between Norway and the Canaries, and, according to Sars, it occurs with arctic shells in the " postglacial " beds of Christiania. If the oyster is the king of molluscs, this has a just claim to the rank and title of prince. In Lister's time they were held in nearly the same esteem ; and the great scallop is even preferred by some, although from its luscious quality it is not so provocative of appetite. I have not heard of its being eaten raw in this country. In the fish-markets of the north of France it is called " grand' - pelerine," " gofiche," or " palourde." In other parts of France they have the name of " Coquilles de Saint Jacques," from the Catholics who annually visit the shrine of St. James of Compostella, in Spain, placing the shells in their hats as a testimony of this pilgrimage. These shells are (or were) also worn by pilgrims to the Holy Land. 1 88 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. In the south of England it shares with P. opercularis the name of "frill," and in the north that of "clam." According to Athenaeus, this or an allied species (P. Jaco- baeusj was used by the ancients for medicinal purposes, as well as for food. Old fishermen have a notion that it is taken in greater quantities after a fall of snow ; but, if true, this is difficult of explanation, because a scallop never, burrows or lives anywhere but on the surface of the sea- bed. They used to be plentiful in Lulworth Bay, on the Dorset coast ; but now they are rarely found alive. I was told that the breed had been exterminated there by an epicurean officer of the coast-guard. Nor were the shells less prized in the days when Ossian sung. The flat valves were the plates, the hollow ones the drinking-cups of Fingal and his heroes, and " the joy of the shell went round." The animal of P. maximus has long attracted the attention of naturalists. As Clark observed, " When the valves are Opened, and the mottled surfaces of the double margins of each valve are in conjunction, and the various circles of filaments and cirri fully exserted in a shallow basin of sea- water, it is scarcely possible to conceive a more beautiful and interesting appearance." The animal is small compared with the size of the shell. This is also the case with other kinds of Pecten ; and it may be owing to the expansibility of the organs, which require much space for their action. Donovan mentions a strange idea, which was entertained by " modern as well as ancient authors," that the way in which scallops leap or raise themselves up is by forcing the under valve against whatever they lie upon ! Shells sometimes attain an enormous size. Dr. Landsborough says he measured one which was 8 inches long. I have VARIETIES OF OYSTERS. 189 another specimen that is barely 2 lth of an inch long. The young are attached by a byssus. They are quite smooth, and in the place of ribs a few fine white lines radiate from the beaks, as is not infrequently seen in P. similis. This might be considered, by the advocates of a theory which was once put forward in the " Vestiges of Creation," a case of arrested development as regards P. similis ; but they ought to be aware of the fact that both these species of every age inhabit the same spots and yet retain their own distinctive characters. One species never grows or merges into the other. The young of P. maximus may be known from P. similis of the same size by the upper valve in the former being flat, and in the other convex, as well as by the inequality of the ears in the first-named species. -It bears a considerable resemblance to a young Am'cula, and shows the affinity which exists between that genus and the Pectinidae. The adults seem not to have the power of spinning a byssus, nor to have any occasion for it. Their solid shells can withstand a good deal of buffeting by the tide ; if they were slighter, they would require the cable of a Pinna to hold them on their anchorage-ground. The substance of the shells is very durable. I have had some of the deep valves in frequent use during the last eighteen years, for scalloping oysters ; and although they must have been baked in an oven at least five hundred times, they are as perfect and serviceable as ever. The prettiest specimens come from Dublin, Cork, and the Channel Isles. This species belongs to the genus Vola of Klein. The young is the P. laevis of Pennant and the older British concho- logists. P. Jacobaeus (the famous " pilgrim " scallop) was at one time erroneously supposed to be a native of these seas. 1 90 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. It is common in the Mediterranean and Cherbourg. It is distinguishable from the present species by the ribs of the lower valve being angular instead of rounded. THE HAMMER-HEADED OYSTER. We have now come to the twentieth family, the Aviculidse, which contains Avicula, Malleus, Meleagrina, Perna, and Pinna. The shells of the sub-genus Malleus (hammer-headed oysters) have a rough resemblance to the implement from which they derive their name. The valves are nearly equal, blackish, and somewhat wrinkled on the exterior, often brilliantly nacred in the interior. They are enlarged to the right and left of the hinge, forming pro- longations on each side, which give them the fancied resemblance of a hammer-head ( Malleus vulgaris ). At the same time they grow in a direction opposite to the hinge, which gives an appearance something approaching the handle of the implement. This is the first feature which a glance at Malleus alba conveys. The hinge is without teeth, having instead a deep conical fossette or dimple, for the reception of a very strong ligament, which acts upon the valves. The animal is contained in the interior of the shell, its mantle fringed by very small tentacular appendages. Only six actually living species of the genera are known, which are inhabit- ants of the Indian Ocean, of the Australian seas, and the Pacific Ocean, (a) (a) "The Ocean World," p. 362. CHAPTER X. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. ANTIQUITY OF THE OYSTER AS AN ARTICLE OF FOOD STRUCTURE OF THE GLOBE FOSSIL OYSTERS OYSTER BANKS OF GEORGIA OYSTERS IN CHALK SHELL-MOUNDS IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AMERICA, FRANCE, CORSICA, &C. SHIELD-BEARING ANIMALCULES COMPARISON BETWEEN THE MICROSCOPE AND THE TELESCOPE. " I WEIGH my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature." -" On a piece of Chalk," Professor Huxley. For centuries the oyster has held a prominent place amongst the delicacies of the table, in antiquity as well as in modern society. From the abundance of oyster-shells, together with flint knives and other stone implements, found in the "kitchen-middens' of Denmark, it is evi- dent that the men of the stone-age consumed large quan- tities of this animal. I Q2 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Though the Heralds' College contains immense and diversified records of the past, it has no vellum or parch- ment-roll relating to the silver-shell (oyster) family. And yet it is to be traced to a period so remote as to eclipse the ancestry of Britain's proudest peer. It may be well to take a rapid glance at its high descent. Some of the theorists of the last century considered the earth to have been primarily a perfect mathematical sphere, without seas or islands, without valley, rock, or mountain, and therefore, as having "neither wrinkle, scar, nor fracture." They did not perceive that what they deemed defor- mity was actually beauty, and no less conducive to the greatest utility. We owe our springs of water, our rivers, the stone and lime of our buildings, the metals so essential to arts and manufactures, the purity and salubriousness of our atmosphere, and the abundance of vegetable and animal life, to the condition in which we find the earth. Its crust, so to speak, consists of some thirty or forty strata of various thickness, spread out one over the other, resem- bling as many volumes piled on their flat sides, and yet arranging themselves into a very few grand groups. The whole set, indeed, is nowhere displayed lying each on the other ; yet their order of succession is sure and known, so that, while some are wanting in every loca- lity, the order of position is never violated. Still further : the strata do not lie over each other like the coats of an onion or of a bulbous root, but have been correctly compared to a vast number of wafers, irregularly formed, laid on a globe, patched upon each other in dif- ferent sets as to thickness, and variously under -passing, out-cropping, and over-lapping. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 193 Were, then, a mighty force below this surface to act on certain points, and along certain lines, the wafer-patches would be bent, broken, and have their edges often turned up, so that those of the lower ones would stand in some places over the higher ones that had been thus shattered. And, now, were a mass of melted matter, which had lain quietly beneath the lowest of the patches, to boil up, burst forth in many places, to raise the wafers, piercing them, finally hardening in fantastic shapes, and traversing over the upheaved and fractured outside, there would be another illustration of the state of the earth's surface. Such is the origin of granitic and similar rocks. Boiling up, they gave rise to mountain ranges when they could not pierce through the resistance ; but, when they could, cooling, and remaining as magnificent crags and summits. It is by following the broken edges or " out- croppings " of the strata, carefully and intelligently, through extensive tracts of country, that the series is disclosed from the crystalline rocks, on which the first or lower stratum rests, up to the last, lying immediately under the soil on which we live, rear our edifices, and gather the produce of our gardens and fields, (a) The astronomer may find good reasons for ascribing the earth's form to the original fluidity of the mass, in times long antecedent to the first introduction of living beings into the planet ; but the geologist must be content to regard the earliest monuments which it is his task to interpret, as belonging to a period when the crust had already acquired great solidity and thickness, probably as great as it now possesses, and when volcanic rocks, not essentially differing from those now produced, were formed (a) "Adventures of an Oyster," pp. 56-58. 194 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. from time to time, the intensity of volcanic heat being neither greater nor less than it is now. () The internal heat of the earth, the elevation and depression of its crust, its belchings forth of vapours, ashes, and lava, are its activities, in as strict a sense as are warmth and the movements and products of respiration the activi- ties of an animal. The phenomena of the seasons, of the trade winds, of the Gulf-stream, are as much the results of the reaction between these inner activities and outward forces, as are the budding of the leaves in spring and their falling in autumn the effects of the interaction between the organization of a plant and the solar light and heat. (<:) It was, however, while certain mineral masses were in progress of formation, and yet soft, that they were replen- ished with the remains of animals which had lived in the waters. Vestiges of their skeletons, coverings, and shelly dwellings, are still discoverable. In the various strata, excepting the earliest two or three, such remains occur of organised creatures, in some instances vegetable, but prin- cipally animal. Even in the lowest beds they may have appeared ; but they would doubtless have been destroyed by the heat communicated from below. Each system of strata has species which belong to itself; a fact which stands among the most remarkable discoveries of modern times. It may be safely assumed that (my) readers have a general conception of the nature of the objects to which the word " species ' is applied ; but it has, perhaps, occurred to few, even of those who are naturalists ex () " Principles of Geology," Sir Charles Lyell, vol. 2, p. 211. (c) " Geological Reform." See Professor T. H. Huxley's "Lay Sermons," &c., p. 237. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 195 professo, to reflect, that, as commonly employed, the term has a double sense, and denotes two very different orders of relations. When we call a group of animals, or of plants, a species, we may imply thereby, either that all these animals or plants have some common peculiarity of form or structure, or we may mean that they possess some common functional character. That part of biological science which deals with form and structure is called Mor- phology that which concerns itself with function, Physi- ology (d] so that we may conveniently speak of these two senses, or aspects, of " species ' -the one as morphological, the other as physiological. (d) " . . . . It remains that I should put before you what I understand to be the third phase of geological speculation namely, EVOLUTIONISM. " I shall not make \vhat I have to say on this head clear, unless I diverge, or seem to diverge, for a while, from the path of my discourse, so far as to explain what I take to be the scope of geology itself. I conceive geology to be the history of the earth, in precisely the same sense as biology is the history of living beings ; and I trust you will not think that I am overpowered by the influence of a dominant pur- suit if I say that I trace a close analogy between these two histories. " If I study a living being, under what heads does the knowledge I obtain fall ? I can learn its structure, or what we call its ANATOMY, and its DEVELOPMENT, or the series of changes which it passes through to acquire its complete structure. Then I find that the living being has certain powers resulting from its own activities, and the interaction of these with the activities of other things the knowledge of which is PHYSIOLOGY. Beyond this the living being has a position in space and time, which is its DISTRIBUTION. All these form the body of ascertainable facts which constitute the status quo of the living creature. But these facts have their causes ; and the ascertainment of these causes is the doctrine of ^ETIOLOGY. "If we consider what is knowable about the earth, we shall find that such earth-knowledge if I may so translate the word geology falls into the same categories. G 2 IQ6 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Regarded from the former point of view, a species is nothing more than a kind of animal or plant, which is dis- tinctly definable from all others, by certain constant, and not merely sexual, morphological peculiarities. Thus horses form a species, because the group of animals to which that name is applied is distinguished from all others in the world by the following constantly associated charac- ters. They have i. A vertebral column; 2. Mammae; 3. A placental embryo ; 4. Four legs ; 5. A single well- developed toe in each foot provided with a hoof ; 6. A bushy tail ; and 7. Callosities on the inner sides of both the fore and the hind legs. The asses, again, form a distinct species, because, with the same characters, as far as the fifth in the above list, all asses have tufted tails, and have callosities only on the inner side of the fore legs. If animals were discovered having the general characters of the horse, but sometimes with callosities only on the fore legs, and more or less tufted tails ; or animals having the general characters of the ass, but with more or less bushy tails, and sometimes with callosities on both pairs of legs, besides being intermediate in other respects the two species would have to be merged into one. They could no longer be regarded as morphologically distinct species, for they would not be distinctly definable one from the other. However bare and simple this definition of species may appear to be, we confidently appeal to all practical naturalists, whether zoologists, botanists, or palaeontolo- " What is termed stratigraphical geology is neither more nor less than the anatomy of the earth ; and the history of the succession of the formations is the history of a succession of such anatomies, or corre- sponds with development, as distinct from generation." Professor T. H. Huxley, " Geological Reform," "Lay Sermons," pp. 236-7. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 197 / gists, to say if, in the vast majority of cases, they know, or mean to affirm, anything more of the group of animals or plants they so denominate than what has just been stated. Even the most decided advocates of the received doctrines respecting species admit this. " I apprehend," says Professor Owen, (e) " that few naturalists now-a-days, in describing and proposing a name for what they call ' a new species? use the term to signify what was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago ; that is, an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows ; as, for example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation has reached ; and that they are not due to domestication or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or to any outward influence within his cognizance ; that the species is wild, or is such as it appears by Nature." If we consider, in fact, that by far the largest propor- tion of recorded existing species are known only by the study of their skins, or bones, or other lifeless exuviae ; that we are acquainted \yith none, or next to none, of their physiological peculiarities, beyond those which can be deducted from their structure, or are open to cursory observation ; and that we cannot hope to learn more of any of those extinct forms of life which now constitute no inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora and Fauna of the world : it is obvious that the definitions of these species can be only of a purely structural or morphological (e) " On the Osteology of the Chimpanzees and Orangs" : Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1858. 198 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. character. It is probable that naturalists would have avoided much confusion of ideas if they had more fre- quently borne the necessary limitations of our knowledge in mind. But while it may safely be admitted that we are acquainted with only the morphological characters of the vast majority of species the functional, or physiological, peculiarities of a few have been carefully investigated, and. the result of that study forms a large and most interesting portion of the physiology of reproduction. (/") Now it is an interesting fact, that with the substance of our globe shells have much to do. " Of all classes," says Lyell, "the testacea are the most generally diffused in a fossil state, and may be called the medals principally employed by nature in recording the chronology of past events." Lying upon and filling up depressions or basins of the chalk, is our great tertiary formation, including many tertiary shells, all apparently extinct. The most common shell is a massive gigantic oyster, sometimes over a foot in diameter. The beds comprising this formation are covered by others of a peculiar soft, white .stone, including much gypsum, and resembling chalk, but really of the nature of pumice stone. This substance is very remarkable, from its being formed, to at least one-tenth of its bulk, of animal- cules ; and Professor Ehrenberg has recognised in it no fewer than thirty marine creatures. Darwin describes the geology of Patagonia as worthy of attention. It differs from Europe, where the tertiary formation appears to have accumulated in the bays ; for here, along hundreds of miles of coast, there is one great deposit, including many tertiary shells, all apparently (f) "The Origin of Species," "Lay Sermons,'' c., by Professor T. H. Huxley, pp. 258-60. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 1 99 extinct. Here, too, the most common shell is an oyster of sri^antic size. o o In a Letter from Mr. Stanley, relative to the Emin Relief Expedition, that renowned Explorer, amongst other highly interesting matter, says : " In favour of the river was also the certainty of obtaining food. Such a fine broad stream as this, we argued, would surely have settle- ments on its banks : the settlements will furnish food by fair means or force. The river retained a noble width from 500 to 900 yards, with an island here and there, sometimes a group of islets, the resorts of oyster fishermen. Such piles of oyster shells ! On one island I measured a heap 30 paces long, 12 feet wide at the base, and 4 feet high On the gth of July we came to the rapids of Gwengwere, another populous district. Near here I saw a stratum of oyster shells covered with 3 feet of alluvial soil. How many scores of years have elapsed since the old aborigines fed on those bivalves ? I should like to know, and w r hat was the tribe's name, and w r here, if any exists, is the remnant ?" In the "Intellectual Observer," vol. i, p. 483, is an account of an "Oyster-shell' island, by M. Aucapitaine, on the east coast of Corsica, composed of layers of shells, bearing some resemblance to the shell-mounds of St. Michel-en-l'Herm, in La Vendee. This island is formed of still-living species, and is between three and four hun- dred yards in circumference, the greatest elevation about thirty yards, and the mean elevation rather more than two yards above the level of the sea. The Romans are said by the fishermen to have deposited the shells of the oysters there, which they salted for exportation, but M. Aucapi- taine does not believe in the artificial origin of the island. 200 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. According to M. Quatrefages, the shell-mounds of St. Michel-en-1'Herm are composed of oyster, mussel, and scallop shells, of the same species as those living now in the neighbouring seas. Many of them have their valves still connected by the ligament which forms the hinge, and they have not even changed colour. The three banks of St. Michel-en-1'Herm are about seven hundred and thirty yards in length, three hundred in width, and rise about ten to fifteen yards above the level of the surrounding marshes. Buckland mentions a large heap of oyster-shells in Galway Bay, at a place called Creggauns ; another south- west of Tyrone, and one at Ardfry Point. The Creggauns heap consists principally of the shells of the oyster, mussel, and common cockle, though the whelk, Pecten varius peri- winkle, limpet, Nassa reticulata, Helix nemoralis, Trochus, and Vemrupis decussata (Tapes decussata ?J, are also found in it. There are layers of wood-ashes and stones, appa- rently used as hearth-stones, showing the marks of having been subjected to fire, but no weapons. The heap occu- pies an irregular space of two hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, and ranges from six to eight feet deep. There are various traditions as to the age of the heaps, and it is said that ninety years ago a series of high tides cast up the heap of shells from adjoining beds, (g} In an old kitchen-midden, in the Andaman Islands, close to the landing-place at Homfray's Ghat, Mount Augusta, the valves of oysters Arcidae and Cyrenidae are found in abundance ; but the present race of Andamanese are stated by the author of " Jungle Life in India " not to eat oysters, which suggests the idea that possibly there (g) "Field," February 4th, 1865. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 2OI were different inhabitants of this portion of the island at some former period. St. Hilaire describes heaps of oyster and other shells, bordering the river Piriqui-assu, near Aldea Velha, which are without doubt kjokkenmoddings. Similar shell-heaps, or Ostreiras, as they are called in Brazil, are found on the coast of Sao Paulo, and on the Ilha do Governador, in the Bay of Rio. They often con- tain human remains, pottery, &c. (h). At Castle Hill, near Newhaven, about eight miles from Brighton, immediately beneath the turf, is a regular sea-beach of oyster-shells, many feet in thickness, forming the summit of the chalk cliffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea. Near Bromley in Kent, and Reading in Berkshire, similar accumulations of pebbles and oyster-shells are to be found. A layer of oyster-shells, with the valves separated, and exhibiting other marks of water transport, is found, moreover, in the Whitby lias, extending for many miles along the coast, and ten or twelve into the interior. During ancient epochs, as we learn from the fossils of both tertiary and secondary strata, many more kinds of oysters lived within our area, and multiplied so as to rival the contents of any modern oyster-beds. In the tertiary system we have a subdivision that is worthy of notice : eocene implies that there will be found the dawn of species still existing ; the miocene subdivision above contains more of the species now living, though extinct species still pre- dominate ; while in the pliocene, or upper division, extinct species decline, and species now living predominate. The oysters of ancient times, like those of our own climate, formed by their accumulation banks, more or less (Ji) " Scientific Results of Agassiz's Journey," by C. F. Hartt. Note. 202 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. extended, of strata, more or less thick and horizontal, in which the shells are still in the position they originally occupied, and almost without any admixture of foreign bodies. Even the bivalves, which live vertically sunk in sand or mud, must also form sorts of strata, because the individuals newly born are deposited by the parents above themselves, so that, sinking in the mud in proportion as they enlarge in bulk, they depress their parents and the oysters below them in succession, so as to remove them sufficiently from the surface of the soil, to prevent their receiving any water, the consequence of which is death. Then their shells, vertical while the animal was living, begin to incline by degrees, become horizontal, are filled with the substance in which they are sunk, resist the pres- sure of the accumulated strata, so as sometimes to remain perfectly entire, or, if not so, they are broken and crushed, and disposed in beds more or less free from every other shell, or even from any other foreign body, (z') The sea-board of Georgia, one of the most southern of the United States of North America, cannot fail to arrest the attention of the observant traveller, and excite his admira- tion of what may be truly termed a natural phenomena on extensive scale, in the formation of its oyster-banks. The land from the sea, for about the space of from twelve to eighteen miles, is completely alluvial, and in general consists of uncultivated marsh lands, through which an iron rod might be thrust to the distance of eighteen or twenty feet. A great number of large creeks and rivers are found meandering through these marshes, and, owing to the sinuosities, invariably resulting from running water, the bends of these rivers would, in a short (/) " Adventures of an Oyster," pp. 64-5. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 203 time, cut away the adjoining land to such an extent, as would make the whole sea- board a quagmire. But it is a remarkable fact, that wherever the tide bends its force, its effects are counteracted by walls of living oysters, which grow upon each other from the beds of the rivers to the very verge of the banks. These ani- mals are often found in bunches among the long grass, growing upon the surface of the soil. They are in such abundance, that a vessel of a hundred tons might load herself in three times her own length. These banks are the favourite resort of fish and birds, as well as of the raccoon and some other animals, who feed on oysters both by day and night. Bunches of them, sufficient to fill a bushel, are found matted, as it were, together; and the neighbouring inhabitants and labourers often light a fire on the marsh grass, roll a bunch of oysters upon it, and there enjoy these luxuries. Marvellous is the difference between death and life. It is a fact open to general observation, that all the coasts of the land composed of mineral substances, dead shells, or other animal or vegetable productions in which life is extinct, are habitually wetted by the ocean waters. But it is not so palpable, except to the student of nature, that no production of the sea, or of any other water, is thus wetted while it continues in the living state. Vitality, and vitality alone, produces this difference. It occurs in all waters, indeed, however soft and limpid they may be, or however mixed with saline and other active substances ; and the more such substances exist in the composition of any water, whether of the sea or of any other collection, the more completely are the living inhabitants of that water, whether vegetable or animal, protected against its action. 204- OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. How then is this ? A mucous, or slimy substance, not easily described, has been provided, in which the surface of a living being is constantly bathed, so that it may suffer no injury from the macerating or decomposing influence which the water, whether salt or fresh, would otherwise exert. As water very speedily decomposes the greater number of organised substances after they are dead, so, apart from the defence, destruction would await the living. Even the most compact of the porcelain shells are invested during life with a kind of membrane, often of extreme tenuity, which possesses the same quality. Most curious, then, is the relation of the sea to a substance which can be wetted by its waters, and to one which cannot be wetted. The wetable substance finds its way to the shore by an obscure but very certain and constant kind of attraction ; while the substance which the water of the sea cannot wet has no such tendency to come on shore, but remains to perform its function in the water. Of no consequence is it whether it is a marine plant or animal, or aquatic bird, which frequents the waters without habitually living in them ; for, if it is fitted by the Creator to live in the sea, there is no surface-action so long as it thus exists, and it has consequently no tendency towards the shore. But when either the plant or the animal dies, and ceases to employ its powers, including among the rest the production of the water-repelling mucus, it is immediately subjected to the action of the waters as a dead thing ; the action of the sea casting it on the shore, as having no longer any connection with that economy of life which has there its range. Such is the cause of the vast accumulation of shells with which we meet on various spots, and on some of the RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 205 shores of the Channel Islands among the rest. This is also the reason why that sea-weed, which is so valuable in the Channel Islands, comes ashore in considerable quantities after those violent disturbances of the waters which have torn it from its natural situation as a living vegetable, and transferred it to those dead products which the sea invariably casts on the strand as of no further use. (/) But our information relative to " Oyster-heaps " is not yet exhausted ; many more could be specified, but I will not trespass upon the reader's patience longer than to notice two or three authentic records thereof. At Wigwam Cove, Tierra del Fuego, piles of old shells, cockles, and oysters, often amounting to some tons in weight, were noticed by Dr. Darwin, which had at different periods formed the chief food of the inhabi- tants, (k) These remind us of the so-called kjokkenmoddings (kitchen heaps) of Denmark, or shell-mounds, to which the attention of archaeologists has been recently attracted in Northern Europe, and which consist of thousands of shells of the oyster, cockle, and other edible mollusks, with implements of stone, such as flint knives, hatchets, &c., and implements of bone, wood, and horn, with fragments of coarse pottery mixed with charcoal and cinders. (/) I have already informed the reader that for the most part the offspring of the oyster remains near the mother, and I repeat it, in order to impress upon his mind and (/) Mudie. (k) Darwin's "Voyage of Adventure and Beagle," vol. 3, p. 234. (/) Sir Charles Lyell's " Antiquity of Man." 206 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. memory the fact that this accounts for the large oyster banks or beds which are found in almost all the seas of the temperate and torrid zones, and which in some places have been known to attain such magnitude as to cause ships to be wrecked upon them. And, again, as the reader is aware, the lower stratum is necessarily lifeless, being pressed upon by the upper one, so that the oysters beneath are unable to open themselves, and are consequently deprived of food. The immense propagation of the oyster maybe under- stood from the fossil oyster bed near Reading, in Berkshire. These fossils have the entire shape, figure, and are of the same substance as our recent oyster shells, and yet must have lain there from time immemorial. This bed occupies about six acres, forming a stratum of about two feet in thickness. But the largest fossil oyster banks are those raised by earthquakes along the western shores of South America, which measure from sixty to eighty feet in depth, are often forty miles in length, and in many places stretch above two miles into the interior. In 1863, Sir John Lubbock published, in the " Natural History Review," an account he had received from the Rev. G, Gordon, of Scotch kjokkenmoddings on the Elgin- shire coast, resembling those in Denmark. Mr. Gordon says : "By far the most striking, if not the most ancient, of the kjokkenmoddings we have in our vicinity, is that one which lies within a small wood on the old margin of the Loch of Spynie, and on a sort of promontory formed of those raised shingle beaches so well developed in that quarter. This mound, or rather two mounds (for there is an intervening portion of the ground which has no shells), must have been of considerable extent. A rough mea- surement gives eighty by thirty yards for the larger, and twenty-six by thirty for the smaller portion. The most RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 207 abundant shell is the periwinkle ; next in order as to fre- quency is the oyster, which, as well as those who had it as a large item in their bill of fare, has passed away from our coasts. Save in some of the nooks of our Firth, as at Cromarty, Altirtie, and Avoch, we know not where a small dish of them could be procured. As third in order, in this mound, is the mussel, and then the cockle." Mr. Gordon further adds that similar refuse-heaps are found all round the shores of the Moray Firth, and that the farmers gradually cart them away to serve as manure or top dressings. These shell-mounds, Sir John Lubbock states, are actually called " shelly-meddings " by the fisher- men of that district. Cockle, mussel, and oyster shells, are often discovered in great quantities on the sites of Roman stations. The following quotation may be considered not to be in strict accordance with the foregoing accounts of kjok- kenmoddiiigs, but the analogy is so close, and the informa- tion so interesting, that I have ventured to insert it here instead of its relative chapter. In the " Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries in Maryland, January, 1880," is the following account of the oyster- fisheries in Chesapeake Bay, given by Mr. U. H. Brooks: "The town of Crisfield, Maryland, is situated at the junction of the two sounds of Pokamoke and Tangier, two large and wide but shallow sheets of water, whose muddy bottoms abound in oysters of the best quality. The town is one of the most important centres of the oyster-packing industry, and is built in the water, upon the shells of the oysters which have been shipped to all parts 208 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. of the country for consumption. As fast as the oysters are opened the shells are used to build up new land, and with them a large peninsula has been formed, stretching out for more than half a mile from the low marshy shore towards the oyster-beds, and furnishing room for wide streets, a railroad, and a steamboat landing, in addition to the large packing-houses, and the shops and dwellings for a popula- tion of several thousand people. A single view of the long white solid streets and docks of this singular town would convey a much more vivid idea of the oyster-packing industry than any number of tables of statistics. At some future period this enormous accumulation of oyster-shells will be considered as a kjokkenmodding." (m) It is a curious fact that one of the enigmas of geology is supposed by some to be solved by animals still found in the stomachs of living oysters. A paper on this subject was read in the year 1844, before the Microscopical Society, by the Rev. J. B. Read. The difficulty in ques- tion he thus states : " It has been discovered, or rather asserted, that there is a break in the great geological chain of organised beings ; and that a link is wanting to connect the cretaceous and antecedent series with a series of sub- sequent formations." Accordingly, Sir Charles Lyell founded on this supposition his arrangement of the sub- division of the tertiary system ; his eocene period, or dawn of our present animal and vegetable kingdoms, being coincident with the third geological era. Dr. Mantell, however, had doubts on this subject, and, adopt- ing Sir Charles's arrangement as useful in the present state of knowledge, he thought it might require to be (m) "Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries of Maryland," 1880. " Development of the American Oyster," by U. H. Brooks. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 2OQ modified or even abandoned with the progress of research, as he remarks : " It cannot be doubted that strata in which no recent species have been found may yield them to more accurate and extended observation." " It is remarkable," says Mr. Read, "that the converse of this supposition has actually obtained, and our modern seas have yielded living forms hitherto characteristic of the chalk formation, and regarded as antediluvial. The merit of this discovery rests with Professor Ehrenberg. My o^n obser- vations confirm all the important conclusions arrived at by Ehrenberg, and are, fortunately, capable of easy verifica- tion. It will not be necessary to send for sea mud from Norway, or for Peruvian or Mexican sea water ; half a dozen native oysters, or, in truth, I may say, the stomach of a single oyster, will often afford us ample proof of the uniformity and identity of organic life in distant ages of the earth, and leave us in no doubt that the dawn of the organic creation, co-existent with ourselves, reaches further back into the history of the earth than has hitherto appeared." Mr. Read then proceeds to state that the ciliary cur- rents in the fringes of the oyster induced him to examine the stomach, under the expectation of finding some minute forms of infusoria, as it aeemed but reasonable that the absence of locomotive power, and the consequent inability of seeking for food, might be compensated by so beautiful a contrivance for ensuring constant nourishment. His expectations were fulfilled and surpassed. In the stomach of every living oyster he examined, and in the intestinal canal, he found myriads of living animalcules. Not only were some of these of the naked kind, but others which have the silicious loricae (the flinty shields), and some of 210 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. those which, in their fossil state, constitute the chief bulk of the chalk. (;/) " Beyond all doubt," adds Mr. Read, " the bulk of the cretaceous series is composed of organisms still living, as I have now shown, in our British seas, and, as Ehren- berg observes, still capable, under the occurrence of favour- able circumstances, of giving rise to the greatest changes in the distribution of the solid crust of the earth. The material, and not the magnitude of the infusoria, is the proper element in these calculations. We must shut our eyes to the minuteness of each individual atom of life, and look rather at the marvellous activity of its law of increase, and at its indestructible shield, which sets at defiance the two great reducers of organic structures, death and fire. A very few nutshells would hold all we should leave of an elephant, if reduced to its ultimate elements by fire, but no known intensity of heat would reduce the silicious mass of infusoria. Fusion, under certain conditions, would be the (?z) The examination of a transparent slice gives a good notion of the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water, and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees ot fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully-constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is something like a badly-grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearly globular chambers of different sizes congregated together. It is called Globigerina, and some specimens of chalk con- sist of little else than Globigerincz and granules. " On a piece of Chalk," a Lecture to Working-men, by Professor Huxley. RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 2 I I utmost result, and thence would originate other mountain masses which, to say the least, would be very nearly allied to those which we term granitic." Surprising as it may be to many to find the shells of oysters largely contributing to the crust of the globe, it is still more so that creatures of extreme minuteness should be associated with them. The Egyptian pyramids are actually built of a limestone entirely composed of cham- bered shells, exquisitely constructed, and of very small size. Other rocks there are whose very substance consists of microscopic shells of extraordinary beauty, once the habitation of minute animals. No one who visits the county of Kent, for instance, can fail to observe the exten- sion of the great chalk range, which again shows itself on the opposite coast of Boulogne. Above the chalk lies a deep bed of plastic clay, and above this the London clay, of which the hills of the Isle of Sheppey consist, and also Shooter's Hill, which is about four hundred and forty feet in height. Near Pegwell Bay, which is a pleasant walk from Ramsgate, this London clay immediately covers the chalk, spreading over a tract of no great extent. In some parts, as, for example, a strip from the valley of the Darent to below Gravesend, the overlying clays have been more or less completely washed away, the chalk being with a mix- ture of sand and vegetable soil, (o) " If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3000 miles in long dia-' meter the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest existing inland sea, the Mediterranean." (o) " Adventures of an Oyster," p. 73. 212 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. The great mass of the chalk is composed, as we have seen, of the skeletons of the Globigerinag, and other simple organisms, imbedded in granular matter. Here and there, however, this hardened mud of the ancient sea reveals the remains of higher animals which have lived and died, and left their hard parts in the mud, just as the oysters die and leave their shells behind them, in the mud of the present seas. There are, at the present day, certain groups of animals which are never found in fresh waters, being unable to live anywhere but in the sea. Such are the corals ; those corallines which are called Polyzoa ; those creatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda ; the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it; and all the forms of sea-urchins and star-fishes. Not only are all these creatures confined to salt water at the present day, but, so far as our records of the past go, the conditions of their existence have been the same ; hence, their occurrence in any deposit is as strong evidence as can be obtained that that deposit was formed in the sea. Now the remains of animals of all the kinds which have been enumerated, occur in the chalk, in greater or less abundance ; while not one of those forms of shell-fish which are characteristic of fresh water has yet been observed in it. When we consider that the remains of more than three thousand distinct species of aquatic animals have been discovered among the fossils of the chalk, that the great majority of them are of such forms as are now met with only in the sea^ and that there is no reason to believe that any one of them inhabited fresh water, the collateral evidence that the chalk represents an ancient sea-bottom RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 213 acquires as great force as the proof derived from the nature of the chalk itself. (/>) The extreme minuteness of the chalk animalcules is strikingly proved by the fact that, even in the finest levi- gated whiting, multitudes of them are still present, and may be applied, without suffering change, to the most varied purposes. Thus, in the chalk coating given to painted chambers, paper, or even glazed visiting cards, may be seen a pretty mosaic of well-preserved moss-coral animalcules, invisible to the naked eye. Our natural vision receives from such a surface the impression of the purest white ; it is only the microscope that can disclose the fact, that it contains the bodies of millions of beings of exceed- ingly varied and beautiful forms that once enjoyed life. .Similar relics are found in the series of the oolite and lias rocks, which come under the chalk, and, in England and many other countries, overlie the new red sandstone. Another instance, too remarkable to be omitted, is that of the polishing slate of Bilin, in Bohemia, occupying a surface of great extent, probably the site of an ancient lake. Its slaty stratum, fourteen feet in thickness, consists almost entirely of an aggregation of silicious shields of one species of animalcule, Gaillonella distans. These shields, or cuirasses, as they have been called, are most beautiful coverings, sometimes of a single plate, sometimes double, formed of the purest quartz or rock crystal, and therefore perfectly transparent. The size of one of these animalcules amounts, on an average, and in the greater part, to one two-hundred-and- eighty-eighth of a line, which equals one-sixth of the thickness of a human hair. The globule of the human (p ) " On a piece of Chalk," by Professor Huxley. 214 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. blood is not much smaller. Those of a frog are twice as large as one of these creatures. As the polishing slate has no cavities, these animalcules lie closely compressed. A cubic inch would contain, on an average, about forty-one thousand millions of these animals. Of the forty-one thousand millions of them, one hundred and eighty seven millions go to a grain. A single shield of the Gaillonella weighs about one hundred-and-eighty-seven-millionth part of a grain. An ingenious device has been adopted by a modern writer to cast light on immense numbers, of which it is ordinarily so difficult to conceive. He says, if a million of peas were placed on the floor of a room, it would require to be sixteen feet square. Accordingly, it would require one hundred and eighty-seven rooms, proportionately smaller, to contain the animalcules that would amount in weight to a single grain ! Ehrenberg calculated ihe fecundity or capacity of microscopic animals to be so great that one of these imperceptible animals can become, in four days, 170 billions, by germination or voluntary division. Many strata in the earth are formed entirely of the remains of infusoria, and a very familiar example is the Tripoli- powder, from the polishing slate of Bilin, in Bohemia. A single grain of Tripoli-powder contains no fewer than 187,000,000 of the transparent flinty skeletons of dead animalculae ; yet the layers of the earth which are made up of them extend for miles. In the harbour of Wisenar, in the Baltic, they increase and multiply at a great rate, for 17,496 cubic feet of mud are formed there every year, and every grain of it contains 100,000,000 of the beautiful silicious remains of the infusoria. In the island of Barba- does there is a thick mass of the most beautiful flinty sea RELATIVES OF THE OYSTER. 215 animalculae, and they are in such numbers that it must be supposed that the dead minute animals were constantly falling in showers from the sea to the bottom. With great truth and eloquence Dr. Chalmers has remarked, as he compared the micrscope with the teles- cope :- " The one led me to see a system in every star; the other leads me to see a world in every atom. The one taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high fields of immensity ; the other teaches me that every grain of sand may harbour within it the tribes and the families of a busy population. The one told me of the insignificance of the world I tread upon ; the other redeems it from all its insignificance ; for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firma- ment. The one suggests to me that within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may yet be regions of invisibles ; and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain that veils it from our senses, we might there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point so small as to elude all the powers of the microscope ; but where the wonder-working God finds room for the exercise of all His attributes, where He can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them with all the evidences of His glory." CHAPTER XI. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. PERILS ATTENDANT ON ITS BIRTH THE DREDGE ENJOYMENTS OF THE OYSTER "GREENING" OF THE OYSTER NOT INSENSIBLE TO PAIN THE STAR-FISH, NOTIONS OF THE ANCIENTS CON- CERNING IT HOW THE STAR-FISH OR SEA-STAR ATTACKS AND DEVOURS THE OYSTER THE ECHINI OR " SEA-URCHINS " THE WHELK TINGLE OYSTERS, THE PREY OF QUADRUPEDS THE CRAB THE OYSTER-CATCHER SEA-WORMS THE CLIONA THE ROYSTON CROW THE CARRION CROW SAND AND FROST THE ASTYRIS. " Life maintains life. The death of one provides food and development to others, for all are bound up together ; all assist at the metamorphoses continually occurring in the organic as in the inorganic world, the result being general and profound harmony harmony always worthy of admiration. The Creator alone is unchangeable, omnipo- tent, and permanent ; all else is transition." The Ocean World, p. 57. Violence produces violence, and antagonism antagon- ism, whether among animals or men ; but it is equally true that, in the absence of such qualities, there may be the endurance of malignant assaults, and of repeated and grievous injuries. The oyster, for example, lying on its PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 2iy rocky bed, is free from all appearance of intruding on the comfort, much less the lives, of creatures in its neighbour- hood ; it might be taken, indeed, as the very symbol of harmlessness ; but still there are many who endeavour to make it a prey. Nor is this any peculiar condition ; wherever oysters are found they are beset by perils. Even from its very birth do its woes and its sorrows begin. Thus, " at the time when all the adult individuals composing an oyster-bank give birth to their offspring, this living dust issues forth like a thick cloud, which, dispersing far from the spot whence it emanated, and scattered by the move- ments of the water, leaves upon the cultch (souche) only an imperceptible part of the produce ; all the rest disperses, and if these animalcules, wandering here and there by myriads, at the mercy of the waves, do not meet with something solid on which to fix themselves, their death is certain ; for those which have not become a prey to the inferior animals which feed on infusoria, end by falling into a medium unsuitable to their ulterior development, and often by being swallowed up by the mud." M. Coste, Voyage d 1 Exploration, p. 93. Or, let us suppose the embryo mollusc to have escaped these dangers ; that it has found and attached itself to some solid body, or to the cultch prepared for its affixture, and further, let us suppose it to have attained a respectable size, and the age of twelve or sixteen months ; and, finally, let still the fancy of the reader follow me, and deem that we are in an oyster-boat. The sails are set, the dredge is sunk, and favouring winds swiftly speed the boat over the oyster zone ! Look ! from the dredge I have, at random, picked an oyster of twelve months growth. Observe how impas- 2l8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. sively it lies upon the palm of my hand. Nay, do not glance at it so contemptuously, but think think O think what a glorious and immortal Sermon could be preached upon this living Text, could we but find a Poet-Preacher to expound it from the Laws of Nature as the Immortal Bard of Avon might have done had he known as much concerning it as what we since his time have learned. Think what he might and could have said thereon ; he that could feel, and has said that " The poor beetle that we tread upon In corp'ral sufferance feels a pang as great As when a giant dies." (a) (a) I must not permit the reader to take the above quotation in the sense in which, apparently, it is put. In " An Essay on the Beneficent Distribution of the Sense of Pain," by G. A. Rowell (Oxford, 1857), that writer says: "It is a very general opinion that death, under any circumstances, must be the cause of pain ; and that even the smaller insects, when dying, are sus- ceptible of pain in a high degree. Shakespeare is often quoted in sup- port of this idea ; and we are often told with great pathos, that The poor beetle which we tread upon, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great As when a giant dies. Had Shakespeare written these lines in the sense in which they are usually quoted, he would have appeared as a very indifferent naturalist ; but it is a libel on the memory of the great poet of nature so to quote them. The lines occur in Measure for Measure, in the scene where Isabella, in persuading her brother to submit to his fate with fortitude, says : The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, &c. It is evident that (taking the whole passage) Shakespeare's meaning was, not that the pain of death in the beetle is great, but that it is little or nothing in man. And there can be no doubt, that this is a correct view of the question ; for, however painful the causes producing death may be, there are ample proofs that no actual pain occurs from death itself." PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 2 19 What a world of beautiful expression and of moving sympathy for this humble Martyr of the Sea, bounded per- haps in a nutshell's space of heart-born eloquence, would that Master-Mind have jewelled in some undying Hymn to The Almighty Architect, who framed this Ocean's Mockery of Earthly Meekness ! Note well how the small, weak, light, harmless, delicious-tasting creature, has locked the doors of its calcareous house, and that so securely that you cannot open them save with violence. How insignificant it looks ! this headless animal ! Possessed of a nervous system of great simplicity, we cannot expect an oyster to be a highly-gifted animal ; its sensibilities are obscure and its instincts limited ; nevertheless, as has been well ob- served "The enjoyments even of the oyster are not so few and unvaried as on a first glance we might deem they were. Among the numberless happy creatures which crowd our world, the shell-fish, and the still more helpless ascidiae, play, it is true, no obtrusive part, yet neither do they mar the scene by their deprivations. The performance of every function with which their Creator has endowed them, brings with it as much pleasure and happiness as their organisation admits of ; in the gentle agitation of the water which floats around them, in its varied temperature, in the work of capturing their prey, in the imbibition and expulsion of the fluid necessary to respiration, &c., they will find both business and amusement ; and in due season love visits even these phlegmatic things, whose 'icy bosoms feel the secret fire.' But this imaginary young oyster of ours. What shall we do with it ? Well, were we in English waters we should throw it back into its native element, and leave it to grow to edible maturity ; but you will please to bear in 220 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. mind that we are in French waters, and, therefore, a dif- ferent and a sadder fate awaits the poor mollusc an evil destiny, to which, in comparison, its destruction by any one of its natural enemies is a mercy. What the nature of that fate is you shall learn, and, in order that the information may not be suspected to emanate from motives of national prejudice, I will give it you in the words of that distin- guished French Naturalist, M. Moquin Tandon. " Every quadruped and every bird, even if it find not a friend in man, yet has a protector from the cruelty of man in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Perhaps it is that this admirable society finds that it has as much as it is able to do in looking after the interests of the terrestrial, without searching the world of the sea for fit objects over which to extend its protecting arm ; or it may be that the sufferings of the denizens of the sea, who have the misfortune to fall into the hands of the lords of crea- tion, have never been brought under the society's notice. But, so far as we know, no effort has ever been made to defend the marine inhabitants from the ill-treatment many of them receive. Let us, for example, tell the tale of the oyster's woes. " The dredge, with a violent wrench, tears them from their native rock. Lifted from the water, they are, especi- ally in France, carried to ' oyster parks ' long, canal-like excavations filled with green, stagnant salt water. The green matter, which makes the water all but offensive, penetrates the systems of the poor molluscs compelled to inhale it. The oyster under this regime fattens, and soon attains that state of obesity so relished by the connoisseur, but which is really the result of disease induced by the unwholesome water of the park. Imagine the unspeakable PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 221 disgust of the bivalve, after living in the beautifully clear and fresh water of the ocean, at being immured in a stag- - nant pool, whose water is seldom changed, but always charged with filth. " When the miserable creature has attained a livid green colour, it is fished up a second time not, alas ! to be returned to its native sea, but packed in a hamper an ignoble prison-house, without door or window ; with only as much of the life-giving \vater as it can contain between its tightly-closed valves, it is scarcely able to keep off asphyxia. As if they were inanimate merchandise, and not living creatures, they are dispatched by rail, tossed about from one van to another ; and terribly shaken, they at length arrive at an oyster-shop. " This is a critical moment for the unhappy bivalve. Thrown into a tub of clean water, its hopes are cruelly revived, and for a moment it fancies its tortures are at an end, and once more it is in the sea. If ever it possessed such thoughts, they are soon dissipated, as it finds itself taken for the third and last time out of its native element. It is now in pitiless hands a blunt knife, in spite of its most strenuous efforts, is thrust between its valves, and with a horrible wrench its shells are forced asunder. The muscle by which they were closed is cut or rather jagged through, and the hinges are violently detached. It is now laid on a plate, exposed to every current of air, and in this state of suffering it is carried to the table. There the thoughtless being for whose pleasure it has suffered untold woes, powders it with the most pungent pepper, squeezes over its wounded and bleeding body the abomination of its race, the acrid vinegar ; and then, alas ! with a silver knife, which only jags, but cannot cut, he wounds and bruises it a second time ; or, worse still, he saws and tears 222 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. and rends it from its remaining shell ; then he impales it with a three-pronged fork, and horribile dictu ! still living and palpitating, he throws it into his mouth, where the teeth cut, and crush, and grind it. "We have said that oysters have in common with their family neither head nor arms ; that they are without eyes, without ears, without nose ; they cannot move, they cannot cry. Quite true ; but all these negatives do not assert that they are insensible to pain. Two celebrated Germans, Brant and Ratzeburg, have shown that the oyster possesses a well-developed nervous system ; and if they have organs of sensation they must suffer. ' Can an animal with nerves be impassive ?' asks Voltaire. Can we suppose any such impossible contradiction in nature ? "We hasten, however, to tranquillise the minds of the dredgers, the breeders, the sellers, and the consumers of the oysters ; and to excuse the indifference of the protect- ing societies ; for there is a great difference between a helpless, imperfect mollusc, and the higher class of ani- mals. In the case of the former we swallow the whole animal, scarcely thinking of its animal nature. It is a denizen of another element ; it lives in a medium in which we cannot exist ; it presents itself in a form we may call degraded ; it has an obscure vitality, motions undecided, and habits scarcely discernible. We may, therefore, wit- ness the oyster mutilated mutilate it ourselves crush it, and swallow it, without a passing pang, or yet a feeling of remorse, and without laying ourselves open to the charge of cruelty. " Following the example of the Romans, oysters are placed in reservoirs, where they grow larger and assume a PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 223 green tint. Is this why such oyster plantations are termed parks ? "At Marennes these reservoirs are called claires. They are inundated fields, which stretch on each side the banks of the Seudre for many miles. The claires of Marennes differ from the oyster parks of other localities in this that while the parks are submerged by the rising waters of every tide, the claires are only covered at spring-tide. " An oyster six or eight months old requires two years before it reaches the point of perfection ; but it is very seldom that the oysters eaten in Paris undergo these con- ditions ; generally the adult oyster is placed in the claires, and in a few days it begins to have the characteristic green tint. The green colour is not general, but is particularly shown in the region of the branchiae, upon the labial feelers, and in the intestinal canal. What this colour is has long been a subject of conjecture. It certainly differs from all other colouring matters, and Berthelot has shown, by a chemical analysis, that it has some peculiarities. Some naturalists believe that it is produced by a disease of the liver, caused by the unnatural position of the oyster ; certainly this would give a green hue to the parenchyma. Another opinion is, that the colour is from an accumulation of animalculae, which are lodged in the tinted parts. Priestley suggests that it is the peculiar green colour which is generally produced in water exposed for a long time to the action of light ; but the most probable solution of the difficulty appears to be that it is in some way due to the soil of the claires. The green molecules are arrested by the branchiae, and thus the action of the organ is much impeded. The poor animal, injured in one of its essential parts, seems to dilate and become more tender, and for 224 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. this its misfortune is the more relished." The World of the S&a. The enemies to whose attacks oysters are liable may be divided into animate and inanimate. Of the former, the star-fish, " five-fingers," or " devil-fish," is the most serious foe. The fact was well known to the ancients, though the mode by which the echinoderm is able to get at the inside of the mollusc was not understood by the worthies of classic times. " The prickly star creeps on with like deceit, To force the oyster from his close retreat. When gaping lids their widen'd void display The watchful star thrusts in a pointed ray, Of all its treasure spoils the rifled case, And empty shells the sandy hillocks grace." (b) So imagined Oppian and yElian. It is strange that it did not strike these two classical worthies that the intrud- ing finger of the star-fish must have been squeezed off by the pressure of the oyster-valves, for the readiness with which those echinoderms part with their limbs is notorious to the most superficial observer of nature. But we know better. Yes, we smile at the easy, childish credulity of the ancients with regard to this and many other things, but, after all, we must not boast too loudly, for it is but a brief time since we of the igth century have become enlightened upon the subject in question. Let us hear what the late Frank Buckland remarks relatively, (c} "The arch-enemy of the poor, harmless, innocent oyster, is the ' five-finger,' in ordinary language the ' star- () Oppian. Halieut 2, 180-185, Ed. Schneider. Jones' Transla- tion, p. 75. JElian (and others) (Nat. Hist., 9, 22) has given precisely the same story. (c) " Oyster Enemies." In Land and Water Journal, vol. i. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 225 fish.' This is the creature which we pick up so frequently on the sea-shore, and which then looks so excessively stupid and harmless that it is difficult to imagine that it is a dire enemy to the oyster proprietor. Five-fingers have a power of locomotion, and they will come suddenly, from no one knows where, and, settling down upon the oyster- beds, devour them all, save the shells just as a flock of wood-pigeons will settle in a body on a field where their food exists, or lady-birds will pitch in swarms on the hops, and eat up all the green insects (aphides) which they find upon the plants. I know at this moment (May 5, 1866), where an oyster-bed is situated on the north side of the Thames, and when the happy owner goes to look at his property, he will find nothing but tons of five-fingers and ' clocks,' or empty oyster-shells, but no oysters for the market." It was for a long time a question amongst naturalists how so comparatively powerless a creature as a star-fish can destroy an oyster, which he certainly cannot swallow. Before answering that question I must ask the reader's indulgence for my digression in giving a brief description I of the creature mentioned. The name star-fish, though often applied, is erroneous : it should be sea-star, or asteria ; and, as I have already shown, it attracted atten- tion from the earliest times. Aristotle and Pliny named them stella marina, from their resemblance to the pictured form of the stars of heaven. The ancient naturalists asserted that sea-stars were so hot that they could consume all they touched ; and Aldrovandus and Albertus declared that whatever they were brought in contact with they cooked; but, as usual, they advanced no proof. Others have affirmed that the sea-stars sting and blister the fingers when touched : a notion which probably led to their receiv- H 226 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. ing the strange name of " Devil's-fingers." As Dr. Drum- mond was drying some in his garden, at Bangor, in the county of Down, he heard some children on the other side of the hedge exclaim, " What is the gentleman ganging to do with the bad man's hands ? Is he ganging to eat the bad man's hands, do you think ?" Now such a superstition is not surprising, when no less a person than Hippocrates, and some of his successors, considered sea-stars to be a cure for hysteria and epilepsy, when taken in a decoction of brassica and sweet wine. But it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish the stinging power of these creatures. Certain it is, that Pro- fessor E. Forbes declares that he has handled thousands of them without suffering the slightest irritation of the skin ; and in this experience that of every naturalist we have known or heard of fully coincides, (//) The star-fishes are animals without vertebrae : they are generally flattened and pentagonal, the branches being nearly equal to each other and arranged symmetrically as rays. These rays are more or less triangular, and are invariably five in number. Their ordinary figure excited the inquiry of Sir Thomas Brown :- " Why, among sea-stars, nature chiefly delighteth in five points ?" And again : "By the same number (five) doth nature divide the circle of the sea-star, and in that order and number disposeth those elegant semicircles or dental sockets and eggs in the sea-hedge-hog." Without indulging in such curious speculations, the reader will find abundant materials of interest in the exami- nation of a sea-star. But, perhaps, the best answer that (d) " Silver-Shell ; or, The Adventures of an Oyster," p. 129. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 2 27 we can give at least the nearest approaching to a solution of Sir Thomas Brown's problem, is in the wise observation of M. Moquin Tandon, that " The organisation of marine animals is far from being rigorously exact. The creative power seldom or never employed lines perfectly straight ; the preference was always given to curved and wavy lines ; hence the asterias are not constructed with exact geometrical accuracy." The asterias are peculiar to the sea ; they have no fresh water representatives. In fact, if a sea-star be dropped into fresh water it will act as a poison, and the animal will instantly die. Certain species are extremely common and numerous so numerous, indeed, that the sea-board popu- lation cart them away to manure the land. "The star-fishes are variously coloured. Some are a greyish yellow, some an orange yellow, others a dull red, or a violet. Their bodies are surrounded by a calcareous envelope, composed of pieces placed side by side, united by fibres. These plates are armed with tubercles and pricks; M. Gaudry found more than n,ooo of them on a red star-fish that species which is most common in Europe. The asterias have a mouth at the centre of their lower surface. There are also upon this under surface globular drop-like protuberances, which are furnished with arm-like appendages ; and it is from the globular projec- tions that the organs are put forth, which are really the feet of the creature. These form a double or quadruple row ; they consist of a fleshy cylinder of a greyish colour, and in most cases are terminated by a little globular vesicle filled with a watery liquid. This vessel is capable of great extension. When the creature wishes to push out its foot, it causes the globular vessel to contract ; this H 2 228 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. forces the liquid into the cylinder, which is consequently stiffened, and can be used for the purpose of locomotion. When the pressure upon the bag of fluid is relieved, the water returns back to its receptacle, and the cylinder becomes limp and contracts. In spite of the .great number of these ambulacral organs, the star-fish does not move any quicker than other inhabitants of salt water, which possess only one foot or none at all. " The month of this creature opens immediately into the stomach, which is a large sac, from which a chamber passes into each arm. These prolongations of the stomach are in reality intestines. Star-fishes are very voracious. They engulf their prey while still living, in a single morsel, and the flesh of them is poisonous." That the asteria plays an important part as the scaven- ger of the sea ; that he loves all kinds of dead flesh, and shows a wondrous activity in discovering and devouring it, we know ; that he can have no difficulty in devouring, whole, small Crustacea and molluscs, we also know ; but how, in the name of wonder ! does the star-fish get at the dainty morsel so firmly locked in the ostrean larder ? There are more ways than one of eating an oyster, and the mode adopted by the echinoderm forms a most strange and wonderful illustration thereof. Its mode of proceeding is thus graphically described by the late re- nowned naturalist, the Rev. J. G. Wood (Longman's Maga- zine, June, 1889). " No one would have thought, on placing an oyster and a five-finger side by side, that the star-fish was a relentless foe to the oyster. Those who can remember their first fruitless endeavours to open an oyster may naturally won- der how the star-fish can achieve such a feat. As I have PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 22Q repeatedly seen, it proceeds as follows : clasping the oyster in its rays, it brings its mouth opposite the hinges. From the mouth it pours a secretion which paralyses the hinge- muscle, and causes the shell to open. It cannot, like a dog whelk, extract its prey and put it into its stomach, so it reverses the process, and puts its stomach into, or rather over, the oyster, protruding the stomach from its mouth, surrounding the oyster with its coats, digesting it, and then withdrawing the stomach into its body. The wildest fancy of Oriental legends never equalled in grotesque imagina- tion this perfectly true history of the oyster and the star- fish." But although the star- fish can, in this extraordinary manner, manage to devour an oyster as bir as himself, it o j .must evidently be somewhat troublesome to him, for he prefers to attack oyster-beds covered with " spat," "brood," or " half-ware " that is, oysters from one to three years of age whose shells are not so hard and whose flesh is more delicate and pleasing to the echinodermal stomach. Star-fish will also feed on mussels, which themselves destroy oysters by smothering them, and on whelk-tingles, dead crabs, barnacles, &c. ; " so that after all they may do some good, as a certain amount of vermin in a game pre- serve is anything but injurious to the welfare of the whole population ; the vermin keep up the balance of nature by destroying and eating the sick and weakly animals, which might otherwise die a lingering death." But it is not every species of star-fish that is accounted guilty of oyster destruction ; of these are, notably, the sun- star (Solaster papposa), the sand-star (Ophiura), and the brittle-star (Ophiocoma), all which are so well known to every dredger. The next on the list of the oyster's ene- 230 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. mies is the Echini, " sea-eggs," " sea-urchins," whose well known empty cases are so common on every shore. The Echini, in form, may be likened to melons, and, although differing so much from the asterias, yet belong to the same class the Echinoderms. The body of the sea-urchin consists essentially of an exterior shell, or solid corona covered with spines, and invested in a delicate membrane furnished with vibratile cilia. This corona is formed of an assemblage of contiguous polygonal plates, adhering to- gether by their edges. The plates are so arranged that the shell is divided into vertical zones hence its resem- blance to the melon. These zones are of two kinds, one being very much larger than the other ; the plates of the larger zones are covered with sharp spines, which are movable, and serve at once for protection and locomotion. The plates of the smaller zones are pierced with pores, from which issue filaments, by which the animal breathes and walks. " It can travel either on its back or stomach. Whatever their posture, they have always a certain number of feet which carry them, and suckers with which they attach themselves. In certain circumstances the animal walks by turning upon itself, like a wheel in motion." (e) " Nothing is more curious than to see a sea-urchin walk upon smooth sand. But for its colour, it might be mis- taken for a chestnut with its bristling envelope, the spines serving as feet to put the little round prickly mass in motion. They have even been observed to make very considerable progress under these circumstances. One of the most singular organs of this interesting animal is its mouth. It is most curious. Placed underneath the body, (e) " World of the Sea," p. 164. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 231 it occupies the centre of a soft space invested with a thick resisting membrane ; it opens and shuts incessantly, show- ing five sharp teeth projecting from the surface, the edges meeting at a point, supported and protected by a very complicated framework, which has received the name of Aristotle's Lantern To this formidable mouth is attached an oesophagus or gullet, and an intestine which extends along the interior walls of the corona, describing the circumference of its principal con- tour. The food of the Echinidoe is still imperfectly known ; nevertheless, from the presence of shells, frag- ments of coral, crustaceans, and even other Echinoder- mata in their intestinal tube, it is to be inferred that a cer- tain number of them at least are carnivores, or flesh-eaters, while others are supposed on the same evidence to be vegetarians." (_/") That the Echini are to be regarded as vermin, in the oyster-pares, has been proved by the following evidence. In the month of May of a certain year, a sudden inroad of these sea-urchins was discovered in the Paglesham fishery, and by the month of August of that year they had eaten an enormous quantity of oyster the size of a split pea. Frank Buckland noticed several of these creatures on the oyster-beds in Kilkerran Day, near Ballynahinch, Galway, and naively remarks that "they were not there for nothing." Another supposed enemy of the oyster is the crab, which is too well known to need description here. This animal is certainly grotesque enough and most amusing in its habits ; it has been supposed to be an oyster enemy by (/) "The Ocean World." For further information relative to this interesting creature see the above-named work. 232 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. some persons, but Buckland is inclined to proclaim them innocent of the great offence. " I don't see," he says, "how a crab has the power of killing a live oyster his nature and office is that of a scavenger. When, therefore, the oyster has been killed and opened by whelk-tingle or a five-finger, the crab will come, like a vulture to a dead camel, to claim his share of the prize." All visitors to the sea-side who may have been bitten with the aquarium mania must be familiar with those white or brown spiral univalves, which may be seen in immense numbers sticking to the rocks from which the tide has receded. These are the molluscs popularly known as "dog-whelks' or "whelk-tingles." The animal is the Purpura lapillus of conchologists. It is extremely inju- rious to oysters and destroys vast numbers. Frank Buck- land says of them : "These whelk-tingles seem to find in a short space of time where the oysters may be found in numbers ; for my friend, Mr. Browning, tells me that not very long ago some fishermen found a bed of oysters out in the mid-channel deep sea. These oysters were, at the time when they were found, not large enough to be dredged up and taken away to lay down on private beds, so the dredgers determined to leave them till they grew to the proper size. They had not, however, calculated upon the whelk-tingle, for these rascals, soon after the departure of the fishermen, found out the bed as well as the fishermen, and were there before them, killing every one of the oysters, leaving only the ' clocks,' or empty shells ; and when the dredgermen came next year to take up the oysters, they found nothing but whelk-tingles and five-fingers, and no oysters. Rewards are offered by the oyster proprietors for these whelk-tingles ; they pay a shilling a bucket for them." PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 233 The whelk-tingle gets at the meat of the oyster by boring the shell with his sharp tongue, which causes the mollusc to open its valves. Buckland wisely recommends that the capsular nida- menta of these molluscs so abundant on rocks near low- water mark, and so easily secured should be gathered and . destroyed. Wherever oysters are found they are beset by perils. Thus, in Africa and other parts of the world where monkeys abound, one of these animals has been seen to place a stone between the two valves of an oyster-shell, and then securely to drag forth the little victim. Dampier observed another device practised by some poacher monkeys : these crea- tures took up oysters from the beach, laid them on stones, a.nd beat them with another until the shells were demo- lished. La Loubere states that the monkeys of the Cape of Good Hope amuse themselves by transporting shells from the shore to the mountain-tops, where they devour the contents at their leisure. Even the fox, pressed by hunger, will eat oysters, and the raccoon, when near the shore, eagerly devours them. Cunningham (g) says this creature watches for the opening of the shells, and then, putting in its paw, tears out the in-dwellers. Barrow states in his account of the Cape, that there is scarcely a sheltered cavern in the sides of the Table Moun- tain, rising immediately from the sea, where living molluscs may not be found on any day of the year. Hither there- fore crows, vultures, and aquatic birds come, detach oysters and similar creatures from the rocks, mount with them in (g] " New South Wales." 234 OYSTERS, AND ALL. ABOUT THEM. the air, and letting them fall, secure them as a prey. The story of the bald head of ^schylus being mistaken for a stone by an eagle, who cracked the tortoise by its fall, but killed the poet, is not, therefore, altogether a fable. " In a cavern at Muswell Bay," says Barrow, " I distinguished some thousands of birds, and found as many thousands of living shell-fish scattered on the surface of a heap of shells, that, for aught I know, might have filled many thousand waggons." Another of the oyster's enemies is a bird, which delights in the rocks, and reefs, and naked strands. When the sea rises it retires before the ebb, and then follows the reflux, groping in the sand for various marine animals, among which are oysters, its special favourites. From this circum- stance it is called the oyster-catcher, and fully is it entitled to its name. So well adapted is its bill not only to raise the limpet from the rock, but to force open the valves of the oyster, as to lead Derham long since to remark : " The Author of Nature seems to have framed it peculiarly for that use." And it is not merely interesting, but instructive, to watch a bird of this kind detaching the oyster from its rocky bed ; digging up cockles with its powerful bill ; and separating mussels from the scarps. If the creatures are small, the oyster-catcher swallows them whole ; but if it finds one too large to be disposed of at once, the bird digs away at its valves till it opens them, and then, devouring the little animal, leaves its shell on the shore. But there are other enemies of these creatures. Such are the sea-worms, some of which are of great beauty, which bore through the oyster-shell at all points. Here, then, is a very remarkable process, which may naturally give rise to the question " How can a soft-bodied sea- PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 235 worm bore through so hard a substance as an oyster- shell ?" and the mode adopted is well worthy of notice. There is reason to believe that sea-worms accomplish this task by means of flinty teeth, which stud their ribbon- shaped tongues. They must be actually beheld in order to excite due admiration. We cannot construct a model of them, even of a much larger size ; for how can we imi- tate the life with which they are endowed, or the instinct that regulates their movements ? These microscopic teeth are beautiful objects ; withal constant in their shape, and arranged in transverse rows on the tongue. Frequently the oyster will resist the invasion of the enemy by depositing some pearly matter between its tender body and the mouth of the invader, and thus compel him to beat a retreat. But others are not so fortunate ; for in the holes drilled by the sea-worms a preparation is often made for the assaults of a parasitical sponge, which insinu- ates itself and eats further than its predecessor into the oyster, causing the softer parts of the shell to rot away, and spreading through the whole substance of the oyster like a dry rot in wood, until vitality is destroyed and its loosened shell becomes detached and empty on the waters. Such is the Cliona, of which Mr. Hancock has deter- mined upwards of fifty species, all inhabiting more or less diversified chambers in calcareous substances ; three or four of which are found in the common ovster. Of these J twelve belong to the British seas ; the rest exist in various parts of the world. They are most numerous in warm climates ; none have been yet procured from the polar regions. On the coast of Northumberland the surface of almost every piece of limestone near low- water mark is riddled by 236 OYSTERS, AND ALL 'ABOUT THEM. I cliona ; old shells, whether univalves or bivalves, are filled with it. "I have seen," says that intelligent observer, " half- grown living oysters with cliona extending from the umbones almost to the ventral margin, and in one or two instances it even reaches that margin" In these cases it is evident that the growth of the sponge must have been more rapid than that of the shell, for the work of destruction could not commence until the oyster had attained to some size ; and had its growth been even equal to that of the sponge, the shell ought to have reached its full development before the sponge had gained the lower margin. Only let this creature commence its attack, and it pauses not until it has acted throughout the entire sub- stance. Before long the middle portion is almost com- pletely excavated, and only small pieces remain to divide the chambers that have been formed. As, however, in the working of Thames Tunnel, there was "a shield' for the defence of the miners, so the parasite leaves a thin plate on the outer and inner surfaces for its protection. Yet this serves only for a time ; numerous circular holes are ultimately drilled in these plates, which are the only indication of the work of destruction beneath, until some slight force from without ruptures the protecting walls, or the increasing growth of the tenant bursts them asunder. The whole system of elaborately wrought cham- bers, becoming exposed, soon gives way, and the cliona, Samson-like, perishes amidst the ruin produced by its own energy. The question naturally arises, How can such cavities be produced ? Evidently by some instrument with which it is provided, like the whelk, which with its proboscis can bore holes in shells, or by a solvent. On this point Mr. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 237 Hancock remarks : " The extreme simplicity of the organic structure of these beings forbids a belief in the existence of a special secreting apparatus. If, therefore, a solvent fluid be the agent, it must be supposed to exude from the entire surface of this humble animal. The character of the excavations would also lead to the same conclusion ; for it is evident that the form of the sponge is influential in determining that of the chambers it inha- bits. The test, then, can be easily applied, and, were the secretion of an acid nature, there could be little difficulty, one would think, in detecting it, particularly as cliona appears to work perpetually, at least so long as it continues to grow. I have completely failed, however, in detecting an acid." The calcareous particles, which may generally be observed strewed along the branched channels in the 'shell of the oyster, when inhabited by cliona, afford, as Mr. Hancock observes, a pretty strong proof of mechanical agency. This, however, he proceeds, I think satisfactorily, to describe ; for, if a portion of the superficial covering of the animal be carefully removed, and placed between plates of glass, with the external surface uppermost, and treated with strong nitric acid, large crystalline bodies of a peculiar character are scattered over it. These bodies are of a pale straw colour, and of the most brilliant lustre and gem-like beauty, the largest measuring one six-hundredth of an inch across. They are mostly irregularly six-sided, depressed, and scale-like, but stout, and frequently thickened in the centre, the upper surface being covered with numerous elevated, lozenge-shaped points, each generally having an expanded base, of a squarish form, slightly raised above the common surface. 238 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. These bodies are frequently congregated into groups, and are occasionally placed together side by side. Strong nitric acid does not in the least affect them after many days' immersion, the sharp angularity of the elevated points remaining unimpaired, and their brilliancy undi- minished. From these facts, and from the manner in which these bodies reflect light, there can be little doubt that they are composed of silex. or of some other substance equally dense. Nor is this all ; other crystalline bodies crowd the surface, which are as brilliant as the former, and, like them, resist strong nitric acid. These are mostly minute, being generally one six-thousandth of an inch wide ; they vary, however, considerably in size, and are occasionally very much larger ; they are mostly angulated, having an expanded scale-like base, and much resemble the lozenge- shaped points of the larger bodies. These smaller ones are crowded together into dense masses ; occasionally they become united by their expanded bases, and then the mass has a considerable resemblance to the larger forms. All, then, that is required, is that each granule, or cluster of granules, should be set in motion ; nor would anything more than limited action be necessary. The motion of cilia, according to Ehrenberg, is produced by the contractile tissue on which they are based ; and if the silicious bodies now described are connected with a similar tissue, the whole surface of the sponge would be composed of thousands of minute drills, quite able to cut into the hardest calcareous substances. (/;) Amongst birds, besides the oyster-catcher, the Royston crow and the carrion crow have the character of destroying oysters. (h) "Annals of Nat. Hist.," 2nd series, vol. 3, pp. 321-348. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 239 Amongst the inanimate enemies of oysters, Frank Buckland makes special mention of sand and frost : " Of all the inanimate objects which are inimical to the oyster, there is nothing more fatal than sand. If we con- sider the highly sensitive and delicate structure of the oyster, it will be easily seen how very obnoxious sand would be to his welfare. The worst of sand is, that it is very liable to shift about in the sea, and great sandstorms not infrequently occur, just as they do in the deserts of Arabia, destroying suddenly whole caravans of camels and men. When I was at the Isle of Re, Dr. Kemmerer gave me a famous instance of a large number of oysters being destroyed by sand. This event happened at a place called Morique There were a great number of tiles iaid down at this spot, and there were besides a large number of oysters naturally adherent to the rocks. Just outside, however, there was a moving sandbank. The oyster-spat had taken well both on the tiles and on the stones, but during a storm the waves brought a quantity of sand, ruined the whole bed, and killed every oyster. Although sand in large quantities is very dan- gerous for oysters, yet a certain quantity is by no means prejudicial to their welfare. The admixture should amount to what my friends at Re call ' sable vaseux,' or mud sand. This ' sable vaseux ' is very good for oysters, but it requires an experienced eye to know it when they see it." Sand destroys oysters either by smothering them en masse, or by getting between the shells near the hinge where the oyster cannot get rid of it. Frost, ice, and snow are destructive to oysters, but Buckland is of opinion that in all ordinary frosts, where the oysters are covered with three or four feet of water, they are safe. 240 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Another enemy of the oyster, particularly when young, is the ASTYRIS, discovered in Chesapeake Bay, near Cris- field, Md., and described by Mr. U. H. Dall, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, in the Report for 1881, as follows: " Only a few specimens were preserved, and hence it is impossible to speak positively in regard to its distinctness from the allied forms Astyris spirantha (Rav.), and A. lunata, Dall (Ex. Say). It differs from the former, so far as the specimens go, in colour, pattern, and solidity, having also more whorls and a more slender form. It differs in form very much from southern specimens of A. lunata, but more specimens of each are needed to determine the limits of variation in these small shells. They belong to a group known to be extremely variable. It may for the present be denominated by the varietal name Astyris, var. Winslovii, in commemoration of its discoverer (Lieutenant Winslow). Though known to be carnivorous, no species of the genus Astyris has been recorded until now as an injurious animal." (/) In the same Report, (/) Lieutenant Winslow says : " During the season of 1878 we observed large numbers of astyris in the shells of the mature oysters, and attached to those of the young. In many cases they were found in the holes which had been bored in the shells of the latter. As we could not find any known enemy of the oyster in sufficient numbers to account for the evident damage done, and as so many circumstances pointed to astyris as the cause, I concluded that the boring must be done by that animal, and alluded to it in my previous report During the past summer we have found a much larger (z) p. 81. (/) p. 70. PERILS OF THE OYSTER. 241 number of the rough whelks (urosalpinx cinereus) than during the previous season, and though they were not found in as large numbers as the astyris, yet their presence inclined me to question the conclusions arrived at during the season of 1878. I accordingly collected a large num- ber of astyris, and placed them in an aquarium jar with a number of young oysters, changing the water constantly and inspecting the animals frequently. The observations were continued over a week, and at the end of that time both oysters and astyris were alive, but there was no evi- dence of any boring, nor did any inspection show an inclination in that direction upon the part of the astyris ; on the contrary, they soon left the shells and went to the j ' J bottom of the jar. I then collected a number of urosalpinx cinereus, and subjected them to the same test. At the end of four days one oyster had been bored, and one whelk was found at work on the shell of another. The rough whelk is known to do great injury to the oyster in Long Island Sound, and the destruction of the young, alluded to in my previous reports as due to the drills, may be effected by this animal. That large numbers are destroyed by the whelks cannot be doubted ; but as it is possible that the astyris may also assist in this destruction, ^. more extended investigation of this question than I was enabled to make is desirable." CHAPTER XII. THE OYSTER IN SEASON. THE R. CANON CORRECT PROFITABLE INVESTMENT BILLINGSGATE AND LONDON CONSUMPTION ENGLISH OYSTER-BEDS JERSEY OYSTERS FRENCH OYSTER-BEDS ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY OYSTERS NOT EATABLE IN JULY STORY OF THE " GROTTO " GEORGE IV.'S "ACT." I HAVE oftentimes been told that it is a mere question of fastidiousness, or fashion, that oysters should be served for human food only at a certain fixed period of the year " Those four sad months wherein is mute That one mysterious letter that has power To call the oyster from the vasty deep," those months possessing the letter r being proverbially the only months when the oyster is fit for human food. Why not, such reasoners have said, eat oysters all the year round ? Life is short. Why not obtain the first of gastronomical enjoyments every month of the year and every day of the month ? I can in no manner go with these opinions, either from my practical knowledge of the oyster or from any just reasoning, (a] Everyone is familiar with the saying that oysters ought only to be eaten in the months which have an r in them (a) " The Oyster," &c. THE OYSTER IN SEASON. 243 it being generally supposed that they are unwholesome as food at other times. This opinion was held by oyster- eaters in the middle ages, according to the old Latin line : " Mensibus erratis vos ostrea manducatis." In " Poor Robin's Almanack," 1719, under September, he says : " This month hath gotten an r in 't, By which Astrologers do hint That the fish icleped oysters Are in their operative moistures, Which tho' counted ungodly meat, Because without grace they are eat, And also uncharitable 'Cause naught but shells come from table, \Vhereby the Poor small comfort gain, Yet this for Truth I will maintain, That with a glass of good Canary, (Oh ! which to drink too much be chary ;) Being wash'd down, I say, with sack, No commendations they need lack !" As a general rule, oysters are not in perfection between the months of May and August, though the impatience of the public has claimed the last-named month as an oyster month, and the 5th of August begins the season. " I am aware," says the author of " The Oyster," &c., " that in our good city of London, in the hottest and earliest days of August, oysters are gulped down by the thousand : it is, nevertheless, an error a revolting, unhealthy, unclean error which ought to be denied, both at home and abroad, by the strong hand of the law. I, for my part, utterly and entirely ignore fish or fowl of the game species, as fit for human food, during the seasons of breeding ; and although an oyster may be eatable in August, if the month be hot it is rarely fresh ; and what is more disgusting or 244 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. more likely to be injurious to man than a stale oyster ? That which I have said .... will, I hope, induce those who have hitherto broken through a rule strictly adhered to by all gastronomers, to abstain in future ; and those who have hitherto enjoyed oyster-eating, fearlessly to eat on, and secure the first and foremost of all gas- tronomical indulgences provided for man only in due season." It is certain, however, that much difference as to time of spawning and consequent fitness for food is to be found amongst oysters. The large oysters, so commonly hawked about on the shores near large towns, are often in excellent condition in the month of May. The common Colchester and Faversham oysters are brought to market on the 5th August. They are called Common oysters, and are picked up on the French coast, and then transferred to those beds ; the Milton, or, as they are commonly called, the melting Natives, the true Rutupians, do not come in till the beginning of October, continue in season till the i zth of May, and approach the meridian of their perfection about Christmas. The deni- zens from France are not to be compared to British Native oysters, which are so called because they are born, bred, and fed in this country. These do not come to perfection till they are four years old. August is a month that hath red-letter days for those who delight in the luxuries of eating. Do we not in that month begin the carnival of " St. Grouse," and do we not hear in the by-streets of London the pleasant sounds of " Please to remember the grotto ?" It is the month that issues in the ever-welcome oyster. In nearly every small street and alley, earlv in August, may be heard resounding j * j * ^~f the words, " Only once a year ;" and groups of merry THE OYSTER IN SEASON. 245 children building their grottos remind us that the long days are passing, that autumn is at hand, and that in a few brief months the Christmas barrel of oysters will be tra- velling " inland " on the rapid railway, passing in its course the friendly and welcome exchange hamper of country produce, containing the choice pheasant and the plump turkey. > " One story of a grotto, often repeated, may here be told. It was built by the children of a widow, on the Surrey side of the Thames ; and, as she was from home on that evening, they brought from her dwelling whatever they thought would render the grotto attractive. The great charm, however, was to be wrought by a small but dingy picture, above and around which they placed their oyster-shells, yet taking care that a good view should be had of it by every passer-by. "A Jew, it is said but on this we would not lay stress, for a Christian, so-called, may be greedy of gain, and one of the children of Abraham may be, in generosity, a noble struck by the sight, offered a shilling for the picture. What a prize was thus presented to the view of these beg- gars of coppers ! It overcame all their ordinary feelings, and, while the children exulted over a shilling quickly to be spent, the cunning buyer chuckled over the profitable purchase he had made. "With great delight he bore it from one connoisseur to another, only to be assured that his first judgment was right ; and then he was anxious to sell it, not merely at a profit of cent, per cent., but at that which is realised when a shilling is changed into hundreds of pounds. Nor was it long before a purchaser at that amount was ready ; he only required to be satisfied as to the applicant's right of sale. But here a difficulty arose in the way of avarice ; 246 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. the man hesitated, then prevaricated, and it was only under the threat of prosecution that he told how the pic- ture was obtained, and agreed that the rightful owner should have the chief part of the sum for which it was to be sold. We leave the joy of the poor widow to be con- ceived ; she was too busy in earning bread for her family to miss the picture ; she was not aware that it was gone, until she heard that, placed in the little grotto of oyster- shells as a childish freak, it had thus so singularly obtained for her the means of comfort and improvement she could not have hoped to possess." (b) On the 25th of July, says Brand, the antiquary, being St. James the Apostle's Day, the priests of old were wont to bless apples ; and a popular belief too, in 1588, though generally ignored in the more enlightened days in which we live, was, that whoever ate oysters on that day would not be without money for the remainder of the year. This is very probable, for without they were selected with great care, disease and even death might follow. This conjunc- tion of apples and oysters on St. James's Day may have suggested Bianca's remark in the " Taming of the Shrew," when comparing the resemblance of the old Pedant to that of Vincentio, which she remarks was as complete as that of an oyster to an apple. One must, therefore, take care not to eat oysters during the months of June and July, because they are unwholesome on account of the spawning-time ; and also be careful in their selection in August. There are instances when persons, after having eaten oysters during these months, have become ill, and have even died. Last summer (1862), at Ostend, thirty persons were taken ill, (b] " Adventures of an Oyster," pp. 167-8. THE OYSTER IN SEASON. 247 in consequence of having eaten oysters in the month of July. They are, during these months, very thin, and without taste ; in the month of September they become again fat and eatable, which may be accounted for by the fact of their being self-generated. The strength of the poor oysters is entirely spent in fattening themselves, in order the more to tickle the palate of the epicure in the proper season. (<:) There is not a man, however unobservant, but knows that oysters are a great source of profit to some of that multitude which rises every morning without knowing exactly how, when, and where it shall dine. Billingsgate, in the oyster season, is a sight and a caution. Boats coming in loaded ; porters struggling with baskets and .sacks ; early loungers looking on it is so pleasant to see other people work ; buyers and cheapeners, the fish sales- man in his rostrum, the wealthy purchaser who can lay out his hundreds and buy his thousands all to be met with, together with that noise and bustle, and, far beyond it, all that incredible earnestness which always distinguishes an English market, (d) Oysters, still sold out of the smacks at Billingsgate, may also be obtained at Hungerford. The real " Miltons" and the " Colchesters ' : are among the most expensive kind. The costermongers buy oysters of a " good mid- dling quality." At the commencement of the season the bushel, more or less heaped up, costs iq./- ; the general price is g/- or io/-; but they have been i6/- or i8/-. In 1848 very large-shelled oysters, the animals being very small, were brought in from the Sussex coast, and had an (c) "The Oyster," &c., p. 12. (d) Ibid. 248 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. enormous sale in Thames-street and near the Borough- market. These " scuttlemouths," as they were called, were usually thrown down in a yard, had a few pails of water dashed over them, and were then placed on a barrow, or conveyed to a stall. But some of the better class of dealers laid down their oysters carefully, and gave them oatmeal to fatten on. () M. Dabry de Thersant says that there are some pro- lific beds in the neighbourhood of Macao, which, after deducting the working expenses, about ^600, return an annual profit of more than 200. A staff of eight men are employed on these beds, at about \ per month each. Another bed, which is leased for an annual sum of 10, for thirty years, returns a profit of from i 100 to \2QO per annum, (c] The best oysters are those collected in January, Feb- ruary, and March. There are several species of oysters in China. The Bamboo Oysters are grown in the following manner : Old oyster-shells of two kinds are selected, thick and thin, each of the thick ones having a hole one and a half inches in diameter bored through the centre of it. Slips of bamboo about two feet in length, one and a half inches wide, and half an inch thick, are pointed and split to about half the distance down, a thin shell is inserted in each split near its bottom end, the two top (&) " China : Imperial Maritime Customs. Special Catalogue, Inter- national Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883." (c) " Flight of the Lapwing." THE OYSTER ABROAD. 277 ends of each split are pressed together and thrust into the perforated shell, which holds it securely. When a sufficient number of bamboos have been pre- pared, they are planted very closely together on the mud flats, much in the same way as a gardener plants cuttings. At the end of about a month, the spat, which had attached itself to them when planted out, has developed into small oysters. The bamboos are then taken up and transplanted about six inches apart. In four or five months the bam- boos are almost hid by the oysters which cluster round them, and which are now collected and sold, (d) The shells of the oyster and murex were used by the Romans as tooth-powder, and oyster shells are now used as manure. The Chinese use the shells, when ground down, in certain skin diseases ; and the valves of Ostrea talienwanensis, and of other species of oysters, are calcined until quite white, pulverized, and then mixed with the juice of certain plants, as a dressing for ulcers, (e) Fresh oysters are used to cure freckles. In the crab traps in China, which are made of bamboo in the shape of a truncated cone, the bait is placed in the middle of the basket, and an oyster is generally used for that purpose. The Chinese have three differently sounding words to denote a large, a small, and a round oyster. (d) China : " Imperial Maritime Customs, III. Miscellaneous Series, No. u." "Special Catalogue of the Chinese Collection of Exhibits for the International Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883." (e) "Essai sur la Pharmacie et la Matiere Medicale des Chinois," par J. O. Debeaux. CHAPTER XV. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. HOW AND WHEN TO EAT AN OYSTER NAMES OF WINES BEST SUITED TO ENHANCE THE TASTE OF THE OYSTER -SPIRITS SUITABLE AND AVOIDABLE FOR SAME PURPOSE AN ODD WAY OF COOKING AN OYSTER CHINESE MODE OF COOKING OYSTERS THE ANCIENTS AND THEIR WAYS OF PROCEDURE OYSTER SOUP POTAGE A LA POISSONNIERE OYSTER MOUTH SOUP WHITE OYSTER SAUCE BROWN OYSTER SAUCE OYSTER ATLETS CURRIED OYSTERS TO STEW OYSTERS AMERICAN BOX STEW DUTCH OYSTERS TO FRY OYSTERS GRILLED OYSTERS OYSTERS ROASTED OYSTER SAUSAGES, &C., &C. " And the recipes and different modes of dressing I am prepared to teach the world for nothing, If men are only wise enough to learn." Athenseus, Deipnos, Book 3, c. 69. Let us royster with the oyster in the shorter days and moister, That are brought by brown September, with its roguish final R ; For breakfast or for supper, on the under shell or upper, Of dishes he's the daisy, and of shell-fish he's the star. We try him as they fry him, and even as they pie him ; We're partial to him luscious in a roast ; We boil and broil him, we vinegar-and-oil-him, And O he is delicious stewed with toast. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 279 AVe eat him with tomatoes, and the salad with potatoes, Nor look him o'er with horror when he follows the coldslaw ; And neither does he fret us if he marches after lettuce And abreast ot cayenne pepper when his majesty is raw. So welcome with September to the knife and glowing ember, Juicy darling of our dainties, dispossessor of the clam ! To the oyster, then, a hoister, with him a royal royster We shall whoop it through the land of heathen jam." The Detroit Free Press, Oct. 12, 1889. Of all molluscous animals the oyster is commercially the most important, and gastronomically the most deli- cious, (a] It was said of a cold climate, that no fruit ripened in it " except baked apples ;" and Bishop Corbett satirically says, " They never heard of a raw oyster there." The eaters of raw oysters are doubtless beyond all com- parison in the ascendancy. Dr. Kitchener, who states that he wrote his ''Cook's Oracle" with a knife and fork in one hand and a pen in the other, actually devouring all he described, is a fair specimen of them, but he differed from the majority of oyster eaters, in opening for himself the oysters he so highly enjoyed. "The true lover of an oyster," he remarks, " will have some regard to the feelings of his favourite, and will never abandon it to the mercy of a bungling operator ; but will open it himself, and contrive to detach the shell from the fish so dexterously, that the oyster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his lodging, till he feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmand tickling him to death." Perhaps, however, even Dr. (a) Dr. J. G. Jeffreys mentions that Redi, in a letter to his friend Megalotti, describes the Teredo as being not only eatable, but excelling all shell-fish, the oyster not excepted, in its exquisite flavour. Nardo also praises it, and wonders why the Venetians, who call it Bisse del leg-no, do not eat it. " British Conchology," vol. 3, p. 159. 280 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Kitchener did not know that the sweetest morsel of an oyster is the adductor muscle. You cannot eat the oyster in greater perfection than at a street-stall, because, as the capital of the owner is small, so too is the stock ; and, to be sure of a rapid sale, it must also be well and carefully selected, and therefore does not need the announcement we read in many a by- way one passes along, where " the tale of a tub" would seem to contradict it : " Oysters fresh every day." The poor man has no need to bid his cook, like his wealthy neighbour, buy real sea-water, or salts for the preparation of artificial sea-water, for the preservation of his oysters. There are thousands of hands outstretched to receive his nimble penny, and to give him in return oysters as fine as any which can grace the table of the wealthiest in the land. To me it is a treat to stand by and see how rapidly oyster after oyster disappears down the capacious throat of some stalwart son of toil, and to think that my favourite health-giving mollusc, in every one that is swallowed, is adding strength and muscle to those upon whom we so greatly depend for the nation's wealth and prosperity. People generally, however, are somewhat indifferent about the manner of opening oysters, and the time of eating them after they are opened ; yet nothing deserves more consideration at the hands of your true oyster-eater. The oyster should be eaten the moment it is opened, if eaten raw, with its own liquor in the undershell, as I have already stated on very high gastronomical authority. It is well worth a little practice to learn to open the oyster oneself, for a bungling operator injures our little favourite, and baulks the expectant appetite by his unsightly inci- sions. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 28 1 " I learnt the art," says the author of " The Oyster," &c., "years ago, in one of the Midland Counties, where Christ- mas-eve would scarce be Christmas-eve without an oyster supper. Let me sketch the scene. In the centre of the table, covered with a clean white cloth up to the top hoop, stands the barrel of oysters, a kindly remembrance from a friend, and the more kind because oysters are not found in fresh-water streams. Each gentleman at table finds an oyster-knife and a clean coarse towel by the side of his plate, and he is expected to open oysters for himself and the lady seated by his side, unless she is wise enough to open them for herself. By the side of every plate is the panis ostrearius, the oyster-loaf made and baked purposely for the occasion, and all down the centre of the table, interspersed with vases of bright holly and evergreens, are plates filled with pats of butter, or lemons cut in half, and as many vinegar and pepper castors as the establishment can furnish. As the attendance of servants at such gather- ings is usually dispensed with, bottled Bass or Guinness, or any equally unsophisticated pale ale or porter, is liberally provided ; and where the means allow, light continental wines, such as Chablis, Sauterne, Mosseux, Marsault or Medoc, still Champagne, Moselle, or any light Rhenish wine, and failing any of these, Madeira or Sherry are placed upon the table. In this list is contained the names of such wines only as are best suited to enhance the taste of the oyster, and to assist digestion. Of spirits, only good English gin, genuine Schiedam, or Irish or Scotch whisky, are admissible, as rum and brandy taken upon oysters will almost always be sure to make them indiges- tible ; and liqueurs are quite out of place." The ancients ate oysters raw and cooked in various ways, some preferring the raw dainties, others some made 282 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM.. dish. Again, as to their medicinal properties, there was much difference of opinion. Mnesitheus, in his treatise on comestibles, says oysters, cockles, and mussels, and similar things, are not very digestible, because of a sort of saline moisture, which has a peculiar effect on the bowels. Roasted oysters, he says, if cleverly done, are very free from any sort of inconvenience, for all the evil properties are destroyed by the fire. That some Romans had a deli- cate perception of different qualities in oysters is as pro- bable as the fact is now certain as to many among our- selves ; and hence it is not a mere satire of Montanus : " He, whether Circe's rock his oysters bore, Or Lucrine Lake, or distant Richborouglr s shore, Knew at first taste." The description will, doubtless, apply to many a Roman banquet : Around stood silver dishes containing asparagus, lactuca, radishes, and other productions of the garden, in addition to lacerta, flavoured both with mint and rue, and with Byzantine mziria, and dressed snails and oysters, while fresh ones in abundance were handed round. The company expressed their admiration of their host's fanciful invention, and then proceeded to help themselves to what each, according to his taste, considered the best incentive of an appetite. At the same time slaves carried round in golden goblets the mulsum, composed of Hymet- tian honey and Falernian wines, (b) This description is strictly correct, as the Romans ate oysters not only raw, but cooked in various ways. Macrobius clearly distinguishes between two kinds of oysters which were handed to the guests, and of which they partook or not, at their pleasure. One he points out (b) Becker's " Gallus." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 283 as ostrecB crudes, obviously raw oysters ; but the others he mentions in connection with the dish that held them, the patina ostrearum, which was a warm dish, prepared from oysters : for patina does not signify the dish only in which the meats were served, but a covered bowl in which they were cooked, as well as placed on the table. (<:) A peculiar kind of bread was eaten with oysters, called by Pliny pant's ostrearius, but in what its peculiarity con- sisted we are nowhere told. Apicius gives the following receipts for cooking oysters: (i). "Pepper, lovage, (d] the yolk of an egg, vinegar, liquor from oysters, oil and wine ; you may add honey if you like." (e). (2). " Oysters seasoned with cummin, pepper, lovage, parsley, dry mint, malobathrum leaves, cummin in greater proportion, honey, vinegar, and oyster liquor." Oysters may be eaten in various ways, either cooked or raw : " The pepper-box, the cruet, wait, To give a relish to the taste ; The mouth is watering for the bait Within the pearly cloisters cased. " Take off the beard, as quick as thought, The pointed knife divides the flesh ; What plates are laden ! Loads are brought, And eaten raw, and cold, and fresh." (/) (c) " Silver-shell ; or The Adventures of an Oyster," p. 97. (d) Lovage (ligusticum) is an umbelliferous plant of strong aromatic flavour ; it is the Ligusticum levisticum of Linnaeus. A species, the Ligusticum Scoticum, is found in Scotland, Ireland, and the north of England. (e) De Opsoniis, 9, cap. 6. In Ostreis. (/) Hone's "Every Day Book," vol. 2, p. 1071. 284 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. The oddest way of cooking an oyster, of which we have any mention, is that recorded by Evelyn, who, in the year 1672, saw Richardson, "the famous fire-eater," per- form wondrous feats, one of whicli was, " taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster ; the coal was blown on with bellows, till it flam'd and sparkl'd in his mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped, and was quite boil'd." Who ate the oyster thus cooked, we are not informed, (g) The Chinese seldom eat fresh oysters : they are usu- ally dried. They are first boiled for a short time, and then either exposed to the sun, or dried over a slow fire until they look like mushrooms, and give off a nasty rancid smell. When they are eaten fresh, they are taken with ginger and vinegar, and a sauce is made by boiling down the water in which oysters have previously been boiled, (h) " Oyster Soup. Take fifty oysters ; blanch them, but do not let them boil ; strain through a sieve, and save the liquor. Put a quarter of a pound of butter into a stew- pan ; when it is melted, add six ounces of flour ; stir it over the fire for a few minutes ; add the liquor from the oysters, two quarts of veal stock, one quart of new milk ; season with salt, peppercorns, a little cayenne pepper, a blade of mace, Harvey's sauce and essence of anchovy, a tablespoonful of each ; strain it through a tammy, let it boil ten minutes ; put the oysters into the tureen, with a gill of cream, and pour the boiling soup upon them." (t) Gower Recipe for Oyster Soup. Boil four sheep's feet in two quarts of water, till reduced to one quart ; it will (g) "Evelyn's Memoirs," vol. I, p. 438. (h) " Flight of the Lapwing." (z) Murray's " Modern Cookery." HOW TO COOK AXD EAT OYSTERS. 285 then be a stiff jelly ; put in it, while boiling, a small blade of mace ; take off the fat, and thicken it with one and a half tablespoonfuls of ground rice ; add from twenty to fifty oysters"; boil it tilf thick enough, and add a teacupful of cream. Oyster Soup is also particularly good w r hen made with a fish stock ; as, for instance, with equal quantities of flounders, skate, and eels, or indeed with any fish that is abundant, and not much in request for other purposes. Oyster Soup. Take four dozen oysters ; lay the fish apart, and pass the liquor through a sieve into a stew-pan ; set it on the fire ; beat up the yolks of six eggs, and stir them in with half a pint of cream ; add water or milk to the required quantity ; season with pepper, a little grated lemon-peel, and the flesh of an anchovy beaten up, with a little butter and a small teaspoonful of good arrowroot. Five minutes before serving, put in the oysters. (/ ) Potage a la Poissonniere. Blanch and beard two dozen of oysters, and four dozen of very fresh mussels ; put a quarter of a pound of butter into a stew-pan, with six ounces of flour, make a white roux ; when cool, add the liquor of the oysters, mussels, and bones of a sole, with two quarts of broth and three pints of milk ; season with a spoonful of salt, one ditto of sugar, a sprig of thyme, parsley, two bay leaves, four cloves, and two blades of mace ; pass through a tammy into a clean stew-pan ; boil and skim well ; cut about ten pieces of salmon into thin slices, half an inch long, a quarter of an inch wide ; cut the fillet of the sole the same size ; put all into the boiling soup, with half a handful of picked parsley and a gill of (/) Maitre Jacques. 286 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. good cream ; put the oysters and mussels in the tureen, and serve. (/(') Oyster Mouth Soup. Make a rich mutton broth, with two large onions, three blades of mace, and black pepper. When strained, pour it on a hundred and fifty oysters, with- out the beards, and a bit of butter rolled in flour ; simmer gently a quarter of an hour, and serve. (/) To make an Oyster Soup. Your stock must be made of any sort of fish the place affords ; let there be about two quarts. Take a pint of oysters, beard them, put them into a saucepan, strain the liquor, -let them stew two or three minutes in their own liquor, then take the hard parts of the oysters, and beat them in a mortar with the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs : mix them with some of the soup, put them with the other part of the oysters and liquor into a saucepan, a little nutmeg, pepper, and salt ; stir them well together, and let it boil a quarter of an hour. Dish it up, and send it to table, (rn) " White Oyster Sauce (No. 43). First scald and beard the oysters, and save the liquor. Next knead two ounces of butter, with one ounce of flour (or, better still, with arrowroot), in a stew-pan ; add the liquor, a gill of cream or milk, a little nutmeg, cayenne, anchovy, and lemon- juice ; stir over the fire until the sauce boils, then add the oysters and serve hot." (;/) " Brown Oyster Sauce (No. 44.) Prepare the oysters as in the foregoing recipe, boil down their liquor, add half a pint of brown sauce (No. 12), or, if there is none ready, () " The Gastronomic Regenerator," by M. A. Soyer. (I) "All about Oysters." (in] " The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy." (;z) Francatelli's " Cook's Guide." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 287 use melted butter instead, adding a little browning ; sea- son with a little anchovy, cayenne, and lemon-juice ; add the oysters ; boil together for a few minutes, and serve hot." 0) " Oyster Sauce. Set a pint of cream upon the hob, beside a fire of clear glowing ashes, in an earthenware pip- kin, glazed inside. Take two ounces of butter, and inti- mately mix with part of it a teaspoonful of best arrowroot, flavour with the flesh of anchovy, pounded, a dash of cayenne-wine, a squeeze of lemon-juice, and a scrap of peel, and stir in the whole, letting it boil until of the proper consistence ; then put in the oysters (if of a large size they should be cut into halves or quarters), and keep stirring the sauce for about two minutes. N.B. In mixing the butter with the cream take care that the blending O proceeds slowly, and keep stirring gently with a wooden spoon." (/) " Old Recipe for making Oyster Satice. Take half a pint of large oysters, liquor and all ; put them into a saucepan with two or three blades of mace, and twelve whole pep- percorns ; let them simmer over a slow fire till the oysters are fine and plump, then carefully with a fork take out the oysters from the liquor and spice, and let the liquor boil five or six minutes ; strain the liquor, wash out the sauce- pan well, and put the oysters and liquor into the saucepan again, with half a pint of gravy and half a pound of butter just rolled in a little flour. Add two spoonfuls of white wine, keep it stirring till the sauce boils, and all the butter is melted." " Oyster Atlets. Blanch three sweetbreads, and cut them into slices ; then take rashers of bacon the size of (o) Idem. (p] Maitre Jacques. 288 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. the slices of sweetbreads, and as many large oysters blanched as there are pieces of sweetbread and bacon. Put the whole into a stew-pan, with a piece of fresh butter, parsley, thyme, and eschalots, chopped very fine ; pepper, salt, and lemon-juice, a small quantity of each. Put them over a slow fire, and simmer them five minutes. Then lay them on a dish, and when a little cool, put them upon a small wooden or silver skewer ; a slice of sweetbread, a slice of bacon, and an oyster, and so on alternately till the skewers are full ; then put bread-crumbs over them, which should be rubbed through a hair-sieve, and broil the atlets gently till done and of a light-brown colour. Serve them up with a little cullis under them, together with the liquor from the blanched oysters reduced and added to it." (q) " Curried Oyster Atlets. Take slices of sweetbreads, or slices of mutton or veal of the same size, put them into a stew-pan with a piece of fresh butter, a tablespoonful of currie-powder, the juice of half a lemon, and a little salt. Set them over a slow fire, and when they are half done, add to them blanched and bearded oysters, with their liquor free from sediment, simmer together five minutes, lay them on a dish, and when cold put them alternately on small wooden skewers. Then dip them in the liquor, strew fine bread-crumbs on each side, broil them over a clear fire till of a brown-colour, and serve them up with some curry sauce under them. N.B. The slices of sweetbread, oyster, veal, or mutton, to be of an equal number." (r) " Curried Oysters. Let a hundred of large sea-oysters be opened into a basin, without losing one drop of their liquor. Put a lump of fresh butter into a good-sized (q) " Old Cookery Book." (r) Idem. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 289 saucepan, and when it boils add a large onion, cut it into thin slices, and let it fry in the uncovered stew-pan until it is of a rich brown ; now add a bit more butter and two or three tablespoonfuls of curry-powder. 'When these ingredients are well mixed over the fire with a wooden spoon, add gradually either hot water or broth from the stockpot, cover the stew-pan, and let the whole boil up. " Meanwhile, have ready the meat of a cocoa-nut, grated or rasped fine, put this into the stew-pan with a few sour tamarinds (if they are to be obtained, if not, a sour apple chopped). Let the whole simmer over the fire until the apple is dissolved, and the cocoa-nut very tender ; then add a strong thickening, made of flour and water, and suf- ficient salt, as a curry will not bear being salted at table. Let this boil up for five minutes. Have ready also a vege- table marrow, or part of one, cut into bits, and sufficiently boiled to require little or no further cooking. Put this in with a tomato or two ; either of these vegetables may be omitted. Now put into the stew-pan the oysters, with their own liquor, and the milk of the cocoa-nut, if it be perfectly sweet ; stir them well with the former ingredients ; boil the curry, stew gently for a few minutes, then throw in the strained juice of half a lemon. Stir the curry from time to time with a wooden spoon, and, as soon as the oysters are done enough, serve it up, with a corresponding dish of rice on the opposite side of the table. This dish is considered at Madras the ne plus ultra of Indian cookery." (s] " To stew Oysters. Take the oysters clean from their liquor. Let the liquor stand till it is clear ; then put a little of it to the oysters, and stew them ; then put to them (s) Miss Acton's " Modern Cookery Book," taken from "Magazine of Domestic Economy." K 2QO OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. a little white wine, a little cream, a little lemon-juice, and a bit of butter ; shake them together, then serve." (/) " American Box Stew. For six people open six dozen of oysters, put them in a basin with their own liquor. Place in a stew-pan a pint and a half of milk and a quarter of a pound of butter, pepper and salt to the taste ; thicken with a teaspoonful of flour, then add the yolks of two eggs ; when boiling throw in the oysters and liquor, let it boil up again ; then pour immediately into six soup plates : in the bottom of each a round of dry toast must have been previously placed. Some prefer two dozen of oysters to each soup plate, instead of one dozen, in which case double the quantity of oysters and their liquor is required, leaving the other ingredients as before." (u} " Oysters stewed. Wash them in their own liquor, strain them, put them into a saucepan with some white pepper pounded, a little beaten mace, a little cream, a piece of butter mixed with flour ; stir this till it boils, throw in the oysters, simmer them till done enough ; add salt if re- quired ; toasted sippets round the dish." (v} " To stew Oysters another way. Take a quart of oysters, wash them one by one in their own liquor with a little vinegar and white wine ; then strain the liquor into a saucepan, and put your oysters to it, with a bit of mace, whole pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and a very little thyme and savory, a whole onion, and a little lemon-peel ; cover it close, and let it stew very slowly almost a quarter of an hour ; then make a sauce with six spoonfuls of the liquor, shalot, anchovies, some butter, a little mace, and juice of (/) MS. Book, taken from " Edible British Mollusca," by M. S. Lovell. (u) "All about Oysters." (v) " The Lady's Assistant," by Mrs. Charlotte Mason, 1775. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 29 1 lemon ; wet sippets in the stewed liquor and lay them upon a plate, lay your oysters on them, the best side upwards, and crumble the yolks of two or three hard- boiled eggs over them, so pour on your sauce. Garnish with lemon and barberries." (w) 11 Oysters stewed with Milk. Take a pint of fine Ameri- can oysters, put them with their own liquor and a gill of milk into a stew-pan, and, if liked, a blade of mace ; set it over the fire, take off any scum which may rise ; when they are plump and white, turn them into a deep plate ; add a little butter and pepper to taste. Serve crackers and dressed celery with them." (x) " To stew Oysters the French way. Parboil a quart of oysters in their own liquor, wash them in warm water, beard them, and put them into a pipkin with a little of their own liquor, white wine, salt, pepper, and a whole onion, and let them stew till they are done enough ; then put them, liquor and all, into a frying-pan, and fry them a little ; then put in a lump of fresh butter, and fry a little longer ; then take the yolks of four eggs dissolved in vinegar, with minced parsley and grated nutmeg, put these into the frying-pan to the oysters, shake them, let them have a walm (sic) or two, and serve them." (y] " Dutch Oysters. Roll rock oysters in yolk of egg, then dip them in grated bread-crumbs and white pepper, one by one, and fry them in butter. Serve them with melted butter in a sauce tureen." (2) (w) "The Lady's Companion," 1753, vol. 2, p. 154. (x) Mrs. Crowen's " American Lady's Cookery Book." (y) " The Lady's Companion," 1753, vol. i, p. 164. (2) "The English Cookery Book," ed. by J. H. Walsh. K 2 2Q2 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. % " To fry Oysters. Take the largest oysters, open them, but do not mangle them, wash them in their own liquor, and take away all bits of shells ; strew a little flour over them. Dip them in the yolk of an egg, and fry them brown in butter." " To fry Oysters another way. Beat four eggs with salt, add a little nutmeg grated, and a spoonful of grated bread, then make it as thick as batter for pancakes, with fine flour ; drop in the oysters, and fry them brown in clarified beef suet. They are to lay round any dish of fish." (a] " To fry Oysters. Take two quarts of large oysters, parboil them in their own liquor, then wash them in warm water, dry them, beard them, and flour them ; then fry them crisp in clarified butter ; then lay in the dish prawns or shrimps buttered with cream and sweet butter, and lay the fried oysters about them ; run them over with beaten butter and the juice of oranges ; lay bay-leaves ar;d orange or lemon in slices round the oysters." (3) " To fry Oysters. Open large oysters, and lay them on a sieve to drain ; then put them into a marinade of the juice of three or four lemons, and a sliced onion, pepper, a little basil, a bay-leaf, and five or six cloves. Turn the oysters often when they lie in this marinade. Then make a batter with flour and water, and one egg and a little salt. Beat these well together ; melt a bit of butter as big as a walnut, and mix it with your batter ; then take your oysters out of the marinade, and dry them well between two napkins, dip the oysters in the batter, and fry them in clarified butter made very hot. When they are fried brown, serve them on a clean napkin, with fried parsley." (c] (a] " The Housewife's Pocket Book." (b) " Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary," John Nott. (c) Idem. HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 293 " Fried Oysters Ostras Asadas, Spanish recipe. Take the fish out of the shells, and simmer slowly for some minutes in their own liquor. Add salt, pepper, parsley chopped fine, a clove of garlic, some oil or butter, in which fry them gently ; stir in a spoonful of flour, and moisten them with equal quantities of broth and wine. When done, add the juice of a lemon." "Fried Oysters; another way. Beat up two or three eggs in a cup, and rasp bread-crumbs on a plate, with sweet herbs powdered, and lemon-peel. Dry the oysters as much as possible, souse them in the egg, and cover them with crumbs. Fry them in plenty of good butter, and serve with lemon-juice, cayenne, and brown bread and butter, cut thin." (d] "A Ragout of Oysters. Melt some butter, put in a little flour ; keep it stirring till brown ; wet it with gravy ; put in a crust with the oysters and liquor ; toss it ; season with pepper, parsley, and fish broth." " A Ragout of Oysters Ostras Guisadas, Spanish recipe. Put the liquor of the oysters into a saucepan, with strong broth, and warm it, salt to your taste ; then add the oysters and a chopped anchovy or two ; let them simmer, but not boil ; serve with chicken, or white meat." " Grilled Oysters. Open and detach the largest oysters ; place upon each a small piece of butter, well mixed with finely chopped parsley and spices ; place them on the gridiron, and when they begin to boil, serve them on a dish ; or else detach the oysters from their shells, and let them simmer in their own liquor ; take them out, and let them be placed again over the fire, with a piece of butter, parsley, some pepper, and a little lemon-juice. Put four oysters into each shell (after it has been well cleansed), (d) Maitre Jacques. 2Q4 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM, and place the shell on the gridiron again fora few minutes, taking care not to let them boil up." (e) " Oysters Broiled the Dutch way. Take two quarts of large oysters, open and parboil them in their own liquor ; strain them, and then put them into a pipkin, with some mace, butter, and slices of onion ; stew them, and after that place the shells on a gridiron, and put two or three oysters into a shell ; let them broil or stew in their own liquor, and so setting them on plates, fill them with well beaten butter, and serve them up." (_/") " To Roast Oysters ^zo6/ Place the oysters unopened between the bars of a fire, or in a charcoal stove. They require about six or eight minutes time." (g) 11 Oysters Roasted. Take large oysters and spit them upon little long sticks, and tie them to the spit, lay them down to the fire, and when they are dry, baste them with claret wine ; put into the pan two anchovies, and two or three bay leaves ; when you think they are sufficiently done, baste them with butter, and dredge them, and take a little of the liquor out of the pan, and some butter, and beat it in a porringer, and pour over them." " Oysters Roasted, American recipe. Wash the shells perfectly clean, wipe them dry, and lay them on a gridiron, the largest side to the fire ; set it over a bright bed of coals ; when the shells open wide, and the oysters look white, they are done ; fold a napkin on a large dish or tray, lay the oysters on it in their shells, taking care not to lose the juice ; serve hot. (e) " La Cuisiniere de la Campagne." (/) " The Family Dictionary," by William Salmon ; 1710. () " The English Cookery Book." (h) " The Family Dictionary." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 295 " When oysters (large American ?) are served roasted at supper, there must be a small tub between each two chairs, to receive the shells, and large coarse napkins called oyster napkins. Serve cold butter and rolls, or crackers, with roasted oysters." (*') Men about town in New York have introduced a new way of dressing oysters before eating them. Instead of using salt, pepper, or catsup, the raw oyster is covered with sugar, and with the aid of a little lemon juice it is ready to eat. The new style was introduced by a China- man, and was quickly taken up by lovers of the bivalves. " Oysters Ostras a la Pollada, Spanish recipe. Take oysters out of their shells, and blanch them in boiling water ; then throw them into cold water, and take them out and let them drain. Put into a saucepan a piece of butter mixed with flour, parsley chopped fine, and mush- rooms ; warm this over the fire, and add sufficient broth to moisten it, and when it is thickened sufficiently, add the oysters seasoned with pepper and salt, and let the whole boil. The moment before serving add the juice of a lemon, or a little vinegar." "Boiled Oysters. Wash the shells nicely, and put them into a pot or pan, with the edges dow r nwards ; put a pint, or a little less, of water to them, and put them over a brisk fire. As soon as the shells open wide, take them off, and take out the shells ; then take up the oysters with a skim- mer, and put them into a deep dish ; put to them some of the liquor which boiled from them ; add to it butter and pepper to taste, and serve with rolls, crackers, or toast. For persons in delicate health, this manner of preparing oysters is both light and healthful." (/) (i) Mrs. Crowen's "American Lady's Cookery Book." (/ ) Idem. 296 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. " Oyster Sausages. Mince a pint of oysters, scalded so as to make them hard, and also a pound of lean sirloin of beef, and mix them ; season with pepper, salt, and mace ; mix up well with the yolks of eight eggs, shape them like sausages, and fry in butter." " To make Oyster Sausages. Take the flesh of the inside of a loin of mutton, and chop it as for force-meat, and season it with spice ; then put to it fifty oysters chopped very small, with a little French bread grated, and the yolks of four eggs, with a little chopped onion, a little beef-suet, and a little lemon-peel. Roll it into what form you please, and, if you do not use it, cover it up, and it will keep for a long time." " To Mince Oysters. Take half a hundred oysters, and put them into warm water ; when they are ready to boil, shift them into cold water ; then drain them, and take that part only which is tender. If you mix the flesh of carp with your oysters, it will increase your mince, and give it a better flavour. Put a bit of butter, shred parsley, scallions, and champignons, into a stewpan, and shake them over the fire, add a little flour, and moisten them afterwards with a gill of white wine, and as much soupe maigre ; then put in your mince, and let it stew till the sauce be consumed ; season it agreeably, and when you are ready to serve it, put in the yolks of three eggs ; beat up with some cream." (/) " Oyster Force-meat. Open carefully a dozen fine oysters, take off the beards, strain their liquor, and rinse the oysters in it ; grate four ounces of the crumb of a stale loaf into light crumbs, mince the oysters, but not too small, and (k) Maitre Jacques. (/) " The French Family Cook." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 297 mix them with the bread ; add an ounce and a half of good butter, broken into minute bits, the grated rind of half a small lemon, a small saltspoonful of pounded mace, some cayenne, a little salt, and a large teaspoonful of parsley. Mingle these ingredients well, and work them together with the unbeaten yolk of an egg, and a little of the oyster liquor, the remainder of which can be added to the sauce, which usually accompanies this force-meat." (m) " Oysters and Chestnuts. Dip some oysters into a savory batter ; bread-crumb them, and fry them brown. In the same manner treat a similar number of blanched Spanish chestnuts. Make a sauce with the oyster liquor, a piece of butter rubbed in flour, and two glasses of white wine. Stew the chestnuts in this ; add some yolk of egg to thicken it, and pour it upon the oysters." () " Oyster S/^.- -Take a steak double the usual thickness, and with a very sharp knife divide it in the centre from one side only, so as to form a sort of bag. Open sufficient oysters to stuff the bag ; season with salt and pepper ; add a lump of butter and some of the oyster liquor ; sew it up carefully, put it on a gridiron, let it gradually cook so as to warm the oysters right through. Serve hot with butter, pepper, and salt." (o) " Scalloped Oysters. Scald and beard some dozens of oysters ; strain the liquor into a stew-pan, and add thereto two ounces of butter, mixed or kneaded with two ounces of flour, a little cream, anchovy, nutmeg, and cayenne ; stir the sauce over the fire to boil, and reduce for ten minutes ; then add a couple of yolks of eggs, and a little lemon-juice (m) Miss Acton's " Modern Cookery." (n) " Household Manuals : How to Cook Fish," by Georgiana Hill. (0} " All about Oysters." 298 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. and some chopped parsley ; add the oysters, cut each in halves ; stir all together over the fire for a few minutes, and fill some scallop-shells with this preparation ; cover them over with a thick coating of fried bread-crumbs ; place them on a baking-sheet in the oven for five minutes, and serve hot." (/>) If you have no scallop-shells, the deep shell of the oyster, well scoured, will serve the purpose. % Many people, however, who prefer the real taste of the oyster, and do not like to conceal it beneath that of spice, prefer the old-fashioned way of scalloping oysters, which is as follows : " Old way of Scalloping Oysters. Beard the oysters ; scald the beards in the liquor from the fish, then strain them off; lay alternate layers of bread-crumbs, oysters, and small bits of butter in the shells, very slightly pepper- ing them as you proceed. Pour the liquor in which you scalded the beards over them ; put them into the oven till nicely browned, and if you find the colour not bright enough, put them before a fire for a few minutes, or sala- mander them. A little cream, added after the shells are filled, but before they are put in the oven, is a great improvement." By lining the dish, and covering the oysters with puff paste, this is converted into an Oyster Pie, which makes an excellent dish. " Scalloped Oysters Ostras en Concha, Spanish recipe. Select the largest shells, and scrub them very clean ; put four or six oysters into each, with their liquor, and cover them with bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt ; then place the shells on the gridiron till the fish is cooked." " Oyster Fritters (2997).-- -Make a batter of flour, milk, and eggs ; season with a very little nutmeg. Beard the (p) Francatelli's " Cook's Guide." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 299 oysters, and put as many as you think proper in each fritter." (q) " Oyster Loaves. Open the oysters, and save the liquor ; wash them in it ; then strain it through a sieve, and put a little of it into a tosser, with a bit of butter and flour, white pepper, a scrape of nutmeg, and a little cream ; stew them, cut in dice ; put them into rolls sold for the pur- pose." (r) "An Oyster Loaf. Cut round holes in the tops of French rolls ; take out all the crumb, rub them over the sides with a tender force-meat made of fat oysters, part of an eel, pistachio nuts, mushrooms, spice, and the yolks of two hard eggs ; beat these well together in a mortar, with a raw egg ; then fry the rolls crisp in lard, and fill them with a quart of oysters ; the rest of the eel cut like lard, spice, mushrooms, and anchovies tossed up in their own liquor, and half a pint of white wine ; thicken it with eggs, and a bit of butter rolled in flour." (5-) " Oysters and Macaroni. Lay some macaroni in a deep dish ; put upon it a thick layer of oysters, bearded, and seasoned with cayenne pepper and grated lemon-rind. Add a small teacupful of cream. Strew bread-crumbs over the top, and brown it in a pretty quick oven. Serve hot with a piquant sauce." (/) " As you open the oysters separate them from the liquor, which strain ; parboil them, after taking off the beards ; parboil sweetbreads, and cutting them in slices, lay them (q} " Enquire within upon Everything." (r) " The English Cookery Book." (s) " The English Cookery Book." (A "The Housekeeper's Pocket Book." 300 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. and the oysters in layers ; season very lightly with salt, pepper, and mace ; then put half a teacupful of liquor, and the same of veal gravy. Bake in a slow oven ; and before you serve put in a teacupful of cream, a little more oyster liquor, all warmed but not boiled." () *' An Oyster Pie (old recipe). Parboil a quart of large oysters in their own liquor ; mince them small, and pound them in a mortar with pistachio-nuts, marrow, and sweet herbs, an onion, savory, spices, and a little grated bread ; lay on butter, and close your pie." (u] " Oyster Pie, another way. Take a large dish, butter it, spread a rich paste over the sides, and round the edge, but not at the bottom ; the oysters should be fresh, and as large and fine as possible ; drain off part of the liquor from the oysters ; put them into a pan, season them with pepper, salt, and spice ; stir them well with the seasoning ; have ready the yolks of eggs, chopped fine, and grated bread ; pour the oysters (with as much of their liquor as you please) into the dish that has the paste in it ; strew over them the chopped egg and grated bread ; roll out the lid of the pie, and put it on, crimping the edge hand- somely. Bake the pie in a quick oven." " Oyster and Eel Pie (old recipe). Make puff paste and lay it in your dish ; then take great eels and flay them, clean them, cut them in pieces, and wash them dry. Lay some butter in your pie, and season your eels with some pepper, salt, nutmeg, cloves, and mace, and put them in ; cover them all over with great oysters, and add more of your beaten spices and salt ; cover the whole with butter, and put in two or three spoonfuls of white wine ; so close it with paste, bake it, and serve it in hot." (u) " Household Manuals : How to Cook Fish." (v] Murray's " Modern Domestic Cookery." HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 301 " Oyster and Parsnip Pie. Boil the parsnips tender and cut them in slices, then line your dish with good paste, and lay upon it some pieces of butter, then a layer of parsnips, some spice, pepper, &c., then some oysters and yolks of hard-boiled eggs, then more butter and spice, &c,, then parsnips, then oysters, eggs, &c., until your dish is filled. Put butter on the top of all, and cover it all with paste ; bake half an hour or so, and when it comes out of the oven, pour over it melted butter and juice of lemon, and serve hot." " Pickled Oysters. Put two dozen of large oysters into a stew-pan over a fire, with their liquor only, and boil them five minutes ; then strain the liquor into another stew-pan, and add to it a bay-leaf, a little cayenne pepper, salt, a .gill and a half of vinegar, half a gill of ketchup, a blade of mace, a few allspice, and a bit of lemon peel ; boil it till three parts reduced, then beard and wash the oysters, put them to the pickle, and boil them together two minutes. When they are to be served up, place the oysters in rows, and strain the liquor over them ; garnish the dish with slices of lemon or barberries." (w] Glamorganshire way of Pickling Oysters. Beard them nicely ; then slowly stew them in the liquor from their shells, with a bay-leaf or two, and some whole black pep- per ; a very small quantity of vinegar is then added, and they are placed in stone jars, corked, and covered with pitch. They are then ready for the London markets. This oyster pickling may be s-een going on in almost every cottage. The oysters when raw sell at i/- the hundred, and when pickled at about 1/9, or even at z/-. (w) From an old Cookery Book. 302 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. Soyer's Recipe for Pickling Oysters for the London Mar- kets, "Put the oysters, with their liquor, in an earthen pan on the fire, to simmer ; take off the scum as it rises ; add some whole pepper, sliced ginger (green if possible), a few cloves, some chopped chillies, and a little vinegar ; simmer not longer than five minutes, and take them out ; remove the beards, and put the oysters in a barrel, and when the liquor is cold, strain and add it." " Pickled Oysters Ostras en Escabechados. Spanish recipe. Make a pickle of the liquor of the oysters, chopped onions, parsley, garlic (this, of course, may be omitted if not liked), bay-leaves, marjoram, salt, pepper, butter into which flour has been rubbed, and a few drops of vinegar ; when well thickened by boiling, add the oys- sters, and stir gently." " Oyster Powder. Open the oysters carefully, so as not to cut them, except in dividing the gristle, which attaches the shells ; put them into a mortar, and when you have got as many as you can conveniently pound at once, add about two drachms of salt to about a dozen oysters ; pound them, and rub them through the back of a hair sieve, and put them into a mortar again, with as much flour (but pre- viously thoroughly dried) as will roll them into a paste ; roll this paste several times ; lastly flour it, and roll it out the thickness of a half-crown, and cut it into pieces about one inch square ; lay them in a Dutch oven, where they will dry so gently as not to get burned ; turn them every half-hour, and when they begin to dry, crumble them ; they will take about four hours to dry ; pound them, sift them, and put them into dry bottles : cork and seal them. Three dozen of natives require seven and a half ounces of flour to make them into a paste weighing eleven ounces, HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 303 and when dried six and a half ounces. To make half a pint of sauce, put one ounce of butter into a stew-pan, with three drachms of oyster powder and six tablespoon- fuls of milk ; set it on a slow fire, stir it till it boils, and season it with salt ; as a sauce it is excellent for fish, fowls, or rump- steaks. Sprinkled on bread-and-butter it makes a good sandwich." (x) " Another Oyster Powder. When the oysters are prepared by simmering in their own liquor, cut them across in thin slices ; dry them crisp, that they may be reduced to fine powder. Pack and use them for sauces, as truffles or morels." (y) '* Oysters on Toast. Open oysters, put them in a pan with their liquor, a quarter of a teaspoonful of pepper, a wine glass of milk, two cloves, and a small piece of mace, if handy ; boil a few minutes until set ; mix one ounce of butter with half an ounce of flour ; put it (in small pieces) in the pan ; stir round, when near boiling pour over the toast and serve. A little sugar and the juice of a lemon is a great improvement." (0) " Oyster Toast. Beard and pound a few oysters in a mortar ; when they form a paste add a little cream, and season them with pepper ; get ready some nice pieces of toast, spread the oyster paste upon them, and place them for a few minutes in an oven, to become warm. A little finely chopped pickle may be thrown upon the tops." (a) " Oyster Ketchup. Pound the fish, and add to each pint of them one pint of sherry wine, one ounce of salt, pow- (x) " Enquire within upon Everything." (_;' ) " Indian Domestic Economy." (2) " All about Oysters." (a) Idem. 304 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. dered mace two drachms, pepper one drachm. Boil up, skim, strain ; add to each pint two teaspoonfuls of brandy, then bottle, to flavour sauces when oysters are out of season." (b) " Oysters au Gralin. Set a little cream in a pipkin, with a piece of butter (the quantities to be judged accord- ing to the size of the dish), and mingle them gradually ; add to this a little anchovy sauce, cayenne, wine, and grated lemon-peel. Pour half of this in a dish, lay in the oysters, and grate over them a little Parmesan cheese and bread-crumbs (not too thick a layer), seasoned in the usual way ; then pour over the rest of the cream and butter, and grate another thin layer of Parmesan and bread-crumbs. Set it in a quick oven or in a Dutch oven." (c] In the Mediterranean, a species of oyster, viz., Spondy- lus gcedaropus, is eaten both in Spain and in Italy. The Spanish names for it are Ostra vermella, or Ostra vermeya, and the Italian, Spuonnolo and Copiza. In closing this chapter, let me remind all cooks that the success in preparing the above-mentioned dishes depends on the goodness and freshness of the oysters used for this purpose. Very erroneous is the opinion that oysters which are not fresh are yet good enough to be fried and to be used for sauces. The greatest delicacy is a fresh oyster, but a stale one is a source of the greatest disgust, and only fit to regale the ghost of that Royal George who, when living, never relished a raw oyster unless the shell was self-opened on the dish. (b] "Dictionary of Practical Receipts," by G. W. Francis. (c) Maitre Jacques. CHAPTER XVI. THE OYSTER AND THE DOCTOR. CURIOSITIES OF FOOD THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER PHILOXENUS AND THE POULPE THE SPECULATIONS OF A HUMAN STOMACH ON OYSTERS SPECIES OF OYSTERS USUALLY EATEN OPINIONS OF DOCTORS (ANCIENT AND MODERN) SECRET OF THE OYS- TER'S DIGESTIBILITY CHEMICAL ANALYSIS HOW LONG OYS- TERS WILL KEEP THEIR FLAVOUR OYSTER-EATING IN PRUSSIA DISGUSTING WAGERS OYSTERS BETTER THAN PILLS A UNIVERSAL REMEDY WHEN LADIES SHOULD EAT THEM REPUGNANCE OVERCOME OYSTERS AS AN EXTERNAL APPLI- CAT