CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XI.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful Sea-anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star-fish—Sea Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship-worm—Their Ravages on the Holland Coast—The Retiring Razor-fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman Estimation of them—The“Breedy Creatures”brought from Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System pursued.Among the interesting and comparatively familiar forms of ocean’s treasures must be counted the Madrepores, often regarded as corals, but quite distinct as a scientific group from the precious coral of commerce. The Madreporidæ are very numerous, and are formed by colonies of polyps. The poet has truly described them:—“I saw the living pile ascendThe mausoleum of its architects,Still dying upward as their labour closed:Slime the material, but the slime was turnedTo adamant by their petrific touch.”[pg 123]The polyps of the madrepores resemble flowers when their upper disc is expanded and their feelers are out in the water. When contracted, they are concealed from sight in the calcareous cells, which have grown with themselves, and form part of the madrepora. These beautiful and curious natural productions assume many distinct forms. Some of them are arborescent, as inStylaster flabelliformis, which puts forth a perfect forest of trunks and branches. Others are star-like in shape; many are more or less cylindrical and oval, as in the well-known“Brain coral”(Meandrina cerebriformis). Another genus is entitledFungia, from a supposed resemblance to the mushroom, there being this difference between terrestrial and marine mushrooms—that the former have leaflets below, and the latter have them above. One of the most pleasing forms is found in the Plantain Madrepore, where the polyps are arranged in tufts.MADREPORES.MADREPORES.The Sea-anemones (Actinidæ) will be now, thanks to the popularity of the aquarium, tolerably familiar to most readers. Although undoubtedly animal, they much more resemble flowers. They are to be found of the most brilliant colours and graceful forms.The body of the Sea-anemone is“cylindrical in form, terminating beneath in a muscular disc, which is generally large and distinct, enabling them to cling vigorously to foreign bodies. It terminates above in an upper disc, bearing many rows of tentacles, which differ from each other only in their size. These tentacles are sometimes decorated with brilliant colours, forming a species of collar, consisting of contractile and sometimes retractile tubes, pierced at their points with an orifice, whence issue jets of water, which are ejected at the will of the animal. Arranged in circles, they are distributed with perfect regularity round a central mouth. These are their arms.”The stomach of the sea-anemone is both the seat of digestion and of reproduction. The young are actually ejected from the mouth with the rejecta of their food.“The daisy-like anemones in the Zoological Gardens of Paris,”Frédol tells us,“frequently throw up young ones, which are dispersed, and attach themselves to various parts of the aquarium, and finally become miniature anemones exactly like the parent. An actinia, which had taken a very copious repast, ejected a portion of it about twenty-four hours later, and in the middle of the ejected food were found thirty-eight young individuals.”According to one author, an accouchement is here a fit of indigestion! Sea-anemones may be mutilated, cut limb from limb, or torn to pieces, and each piece will become a new anemone in the end.“They adhere,”says Dr. Johnson,“to rocks, shells, and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous secretion from their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and remove to another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen ofActinia crassicornisthat might have been originally two inches in diameter,[pg 124]which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve ofPecten maximusof the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was, of course, prevented; yet, instead of emaciating and dying of atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions.”The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are literally killed by contact with them.In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the Green Actinia being in special repute.SEA-ANEMONES.SEA-ANEMONES.1.Actinoloba dianthus. 2.Cereus gemmaceus. 3.Actinia bicolor. 4.Sagartia viduata. 5.Cereus papillossus. 6.Actinia picta. 7.Actinia equina. 8.Sagartia rosea. 9.Sagartia coccinea.The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and cretaceous. It is animated with life.A vast natural group is that of theEchinodermata, which includes five orders, or[pg 125]families, embracing among them the star-fish, the sea-eggs, or sea-urchins, and the sea-cucumbers, or“sea-slugs”(Holothurias), the latter of which are important items in the food of many Asiatics. The generic term Echinodermata signifies an animal bristling with spines, but the group includes many to whom it could not be applied.The Star-fish (Asterias) is met in almost every sea, and in all latitudes, although more richly varied in tropical seas. They vary in colour from a yellowish-grey to orange, red, or violet. The body of the asterias is a most curious organisation, having sometimes as many as 11,000 juxta-imposed pieces, while it possesses spines and tubercles. Observe one stranded on the shore, and it may appear destitute of locomotive powers. But this is not so, for they can slowly creep over small spaces, and even up the vertical sides of rocks. Frédol says:—“If an asterias is turned upon its back, it will at first remain immovable, with its feet shut up. Soon, however, out come the feet like so many little feelers; it moves them backward and forward, as if feeling for the ground; it soon inclines them towards the bottom of the vase, and fixes them one after the other. When it has a sufficient number attached, the animal turns itself round. It is not impossible, whilst walking[pg 126]on the sea-shore, to have the pleasure of seeing one of these star-fishes walking upon the sand,”although they are very commonly left dead there.The star-fish’s mouth is on its lower side, and almost directly abuts on its stomach. It is a voracious feeder, and will even attack molluscs. Formerly it was believed that the animal would open an oyster with one of its rays, or legs, but this was unlikely, as the oyster might be likely enough to have the best of it in such a case by shutting his shells on the intruder. It is now pretty well understood that it injects an acrid poison into the oyster’s shell, which obliges it to open.STAR-FISH.STAR-FISH.The“Urchins”seem to owe their name to Aristotle, and their spiny covering and armature have in all ages attracted the attention of naturalists. Some of them have 3,000 or 4,000 prickles, and their organisation is really wonderful. They are enclosed in a globular hollow box, which grows with their growth. Gosse explains how. The box can never be cast off, and it is obvious that the deposits made from inside would only narrow the space, which really requires to be enlarged.“The growing animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food. Its cry is‘Give me space! a larger house, or I die!’How is this problem solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of the Creator has a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made in one piece, nor in ten, nor a hundred. Six hundred distinct pieces go to make up the hollow case, all accurately fitted together, so that the perfect symmetry of outline remains unbroken; and yet, thin as their substance is, they retain their relative positions with unchanging exactness, and the slight brittle box retains all requisite strength and firmness, for each of these pieces is enveloped by a layer of living flesh; a vascular tissue passes up between the joints, where one meets another, and spreads itself over the whole exterior surface.”Their spines are instruments of defence and of locomotion; each has several muscles to work it.The poet-scientist, Michelet, has beautifully painted the animal’s nature, and makes it describe itself as follows.“I am born,”says the unobtrusive Echinoderm,“without ambition; I ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen the molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls; I have no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out; still less do I desire the grace of your giddy medusas, the waving charm of whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwreck. Oh, mother! I wish for one thing only,to be—to be without these exterior and compromising appendages; to be thickset, strong, and round, for that is the shape in which I should be the least exposed; in short, to be a centralised being. I have very little instinct for travel. To roll sometimes from the surface to the bottom of the sea is enough of travel for me. Glued firmly to my rock, I could there solve the problem, the solution of which your favourite, man, seeks for in vain—that of safety. To strictly exclude enemies and admit all friends, especially water, air, and light, would, I know, cost me some labour and constant effort. Covered with movable spines, enemies will avoid me. Now, bristling like a bear, they call me an urchin.”34URCHINS IN A ROCK.URCHINS IN A ROCK.The term“sea-cucumber”accurately describes the shape of the Holothuria, which is in general terms a worm-like cylinder, varying as much as from an inch or two to[pg 127]thirty, and, in exceptional cases, forty inches in length. The skin of the animal is usually thick and leathery; it is crowned by a mouth with a fringe of tentacula, which expand like a flower when it is unmolested. They particularly avoid the glare of light. One large eatable species is common in the Mediterranean, and is used for food in Naples and elsewhere. But it is in the Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seas that theHolothuria edulis, known there as thetrepang, is an important adjunct to the food of the natives. Thousands of junks are employed in the trepang fisheries. The Malay fisherman will harpoon them with a long bamboo terminating in a sharp hook at a distance of thirty yards. In four or five fathoms of water native divers are employed, who seize them in their hands, and will bring up several at a time. They are then boiled, and flattened with stones; after which process they are spread out on bamboo mats to dry, first in the sun and afterwards by smoking. They are then put in sacks and shipped principally to Chinese ports, where they are considered a luxury.The great French navigator, Dumont d’Urville, witnessed the processes employed while in Raffles Bay. An hour after the arrival of four prows all the men were at work ashore cooking them in boilers placed over roughly-constructed stone furnaces, after which they were dried on hurdled roofs. Captain d’Urville went on board one of the Malay vessels, where he was received with cordiality by the padrone, or captain.“He,”says that navigator,“showed us over his little ship. The keel appeared to us sufficiently solid; even the lines did not want elegance; but great disorder seemed to reign in the stowage department. From a kind of bridge, formed by hurdles of bamboos and junk, we saw the cabin, which looked like a poultry house: bags of rice, packets and boxes were huddled together. Below was the store of water, of cured trepang, and the sailors’ berths. Each boat was furnished with two rudders, one at each end, which lifted itself when the boat touched the bottom. The craft was furnished with two masts, without shrouds, which could be lowered on to the bridge at will by means of a hinge; they carry the ordinary sail; the anchors are of wood, for iron is rarely used by the Malays; their cables are made of rattan fibre; the crew of each bark consists of about thirty-seven, each shore boat having a crew of six men. At the moment of our visit they were all occupied in fishing operations, some of them being anchored very near to us. Seven or eight of their number, nearly naked, were diving for trepang; the padrone alone was unoccupied. An ardent sun darted its rays upon their heads without appearing to incommode them, an exposure which no European could hold up under. It was near mid-day, and the moment, as our Malay captain assured us, most favourable for the fishing. In fact, we saw that each diver returned to the surface with at least one animal, and sometimes two, in his hands. It appears that the higher the sun is above the horizon, the more easily is the creature distinguished at the bottom. The divers were so rapid in their movements that they scarcely touched the boat, into which they threw the animals before they dived again. When the boat was filled with them, it proceeded to the shore, and its place was supplied by an empty one.”The Holothuria taken there were five to six inches long. D’Urville tasted it when prepared, and says that it resembled lobster. His men, however, took more kindly to it than did he.SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).We must now examine a most important class of pulpy animals, the Mollusca,[pg 128]of which the bivalve molluscs are by far the most important to man. In consequence of their very softness and delicacy, Nature has provided them with a shell coat of calcareous mail.The sub-classAcephala, are as their names indicate,headlessmolluscs, and though sometimespartiallynaked, are usually very well protected by shells. When it is known that there are over 4,000 species of bivalve molluscs, the impossibility of describing more than a few typical and prominent examples will be seen.The genusTeredoconsists of marine worm-like animals having a special and irresistible inclination for boring wood, whatever its hardness. Ships have been thus silently and secretly undermined, till the planks have been either like sponges or have crumbled into dust under the very feet of their crews. The holes bored by these imperceptible miners riddle the entire interior of a piece of wood, without any external indication of their ravages. Piles and piers have been utterly ruined, and vessels have sometimes gone to the bottom through them. At the beginning of the last century half the coast of Holland was threatened with inundation and practical annihilation because the piles which support its dykes were attacked by the teredo, and hundreds of thousands of pounds damage was done by this wretched worm. It has been now discovered that the worm has a great antipathy to oxide of iron, and wood impregnated with it is secure from its ravages. Other animals of the same group are capable of boring even rock.Another important bivalve is the well known Solen or“razor-fish,”varieties of which are common all over the globe.“These molluscs,”says Figuier,“live with their shells buried vertically in the sand, a short distance from the shore; the hole which they have hollowed, and which they never quit, sometimes attains as much as two yards in depth; by means of their foot, which is large, conical, swollen in the middle and pointed at its extremity, they raise themselves with great agility to the entrance of their burrow. They bury themselves rapidly, and disappear on the slightest approach of danger.“When the sea retires, the presence of the Solen is indicated by a small orifice in the[pg 129]sand, whence escape at intervals bubbles of air. In order to attract them to the surface, the fishermen throw into the hole a pinch of salt; the sand immediately becomes stirred, and the animal presents itself just above the point of its shell. It must be seized at once, for it disappears again very quickly, and no renewed efforts will bring it to the surface a second time. Its retreat is commonly cut short by a knife being passed below it; for it burrows into the ground with such velocity that it is difficult to capture it with the hand alone. The fish itself is a kind of marine worm.”THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).But of the Acephalous Mollusca none are more important to man than the mussel and oyster, the pearl-bearing varieties of which latter have been already considered. Both are familiar to every reader.TheMytilus edulis, the edible mussel of commerce, the“poor man’s oyster,”is provided with a byssus, a bundle of hairs or threads, by which it can anchor to the rock. In its natural state it is much less fitted for human food than when cultivated. Their civilisation, as it might be termed, dates back to the year 1236, when the master of a barque, an Irishman named Walton, was wrecked in the bay or creek of Aiguillon, a few miles distant from Rochelle. The exile at first supported himself by hunting sea-fowl in the neighbouring marshes, where he also soon began, being an observant man, to notice certain peculiarities of mussel life.THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).Walton remarked that many of the mussels attached themselves by preference to that part of posts or stones a littleabovethe mud of the marshes, and that those so situated soon became plumper and fatter, and more suitable for edible purposes, than those buriedinthe mud. He soon saw the possibilities of a new branch of industry.“The practices he introduced,”wrote a distinguished French writer, long ago,“were so happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created for a numerous population is governed.”He placed long rows of twelve-foot posts, about six feet high out of the watery mud, and a yard apart, each pair of which always formed a letter V; in other words, a number of them radiated from a common centre. The posts were interlaced with a basket-work of branches, so as to form continuous hurdles; these are now termedbouchots. He also had isolated posts, and one of his great ideas was, as in oyster culture to-day, to arrest the spat, which[pg 130]would otherwise have washed away to sea with the tide, and been lost.“At the present time these lines of hurdles form a perfect little forest at Aiguillon; there are about a quarter of a million piles alone. In July thebouchotiers, as the men employed in this culture are termed, launch their punts, and proceeding to the marshes, detach with a hook the thickly agglomerated masses of young mussels from the piles, which they gather in baskets and take to the bouchots, which form a perfect hedge of fascines and branches, of different heights. Each stage receives the mollusc suitable to it. In the first stage of its existence the mussel cannot endure exposure to the air, and remains constantly under water, except at the period of spring tides. These are gathered in sacks made of old matting, or suspended in interstices of the basket-work. The mussels are advanced stage after stage until they reach the highest bouchots, which remain out of water at all tides.”The whole bay yielded close on half a million pounds sterling some years ago.“While,”says Figuier,“commending the mussel as an important article of food, we must not conceal the fact that it has produced in certain persons very grave effects, showing that for them its flesh has the effects of poison. The symptoms, commonly observed two or three hours after the repast, are weakness or torpor, constriction of the throat and swelling of the head, accompanied by great thirst, nausea, frequent vomitings, and eruptions of the skin and severe itching.“The cause of these attacks is not very well ascertained; they have in turn been ascribed to the presence of the coppery pyrites in the neighbourhood of the mussel; to certain small crabs which lodge themselves as parasites in the shell of the mussel; to the spawn of star-fish or medusæ that the mussel may have swallowed. But, probably the true cause of this kind of poisoning is found in the predisposition of individuals. The remedy is very simple; an emetic, accompanied by drinking plentifully of slightly acidulated beverage.”They are eaten very freely in most parts of the seaboard of the United States, and the present writer has eaten them constantly, boiled, stewed with tomatoes, &c., and in soup, without the slightest bad effects.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.Thebivalvepar excellencemust always beOstrea edulis, the common oyster. This mollusc, which some might be inclined to place low in the scale of nature, has really a complex and delicate organisation. It has a mouth, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines; its blood is colourless, but it has a true circulation; and it breathes under water, as do fishes.“Having no head,”says Figuier,“the oyster can have no brain; the nerves originate near the mouth, where a great ganglion is visible, whence issue a pair of nerves which distribute themselves in the regions of the stomach and liver, terminating in a second ganglion, situated behind the liver. The first nervous branch distributes its sensibility to the mouth and tentacles; the second, to the respiratory branchiæ. With organs of the senses oysters are unprovided. Condemned to a sedentary life, riveted to a rock, where they have been rooted, as it were, in their infancy, they neither see nor hear; touch appears to be their only sense, and that is placed in the labial tentacles of the mouth.”The oyster may carry hundreds of thousands of eggs—some say as many as 2,000,000; it ejects them after a process of incubation. Nothing is more curious than to witness a bank of oysters in the spawning season, which is usually from the month of June to the end of Septem[pg 131]ber.35Every adult—for the oyster is sexless—throws forth a living dust, a perfect cloud of embryotic life. The spat is soon scattered far and wide, and unless the young oyster attach itself to some solid body, it falls a victim to other marine animals. Microscopic in size when it leaves the parent, it is at the end of a month about the size of a large pea; in a year it may be an inch and a half in diameter; in three it is getting on to a quite respectable size, and after a short course in the oyster park it is ready for the table.36Oysters are of all sizes, and there are some so large that they require to be carved. In New York, the paradise of oyster-eaters, they range from the size of a half-crown to five or six inches long. The shores of Long Island, a distance round of 115 miles, are one continuous oyster-field, while the one State of Virginia is said to possess nearly 2,000,000 acres of oyster-beds. The Americans are great lovers of the bivalve, which is probably one of the most wholesome forms ofeasynourishment which can possibly be taken. In a stew with milk, and a little oatmeal, or as soup, they are especially good for invalids, and when one can take nothing else, he can usually relish oysters. And, as all gastronomers know, they rather increase than diminish appetite; hence the modern French practice of taking half a dozenbeforethe soup is served.“There is no alimentary substance,”says a French writer,“not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances; but oysters never.... We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always and in profusion, without fear of indigestion.”The few who cannot eat them, and therearesuch, are really to be commiserated. How highly they are esteemed in some countries is shown by the fact that some years ago they cost in St. Petersburg a paper rouble, or about a shillingeach; in Stockholm, fivepence each. In England only two or three years ago they had risen to nearly four-fifths of the latter price; but now, thanks to the extensive cultivation, and to the importation of excellent American oysters on a large scale, they are within the reach of all.Of the quantity of oysters consumed in London alone who can give even an approximate guess? Fancy, if you can, also, that curiously courteous exchange which goes on every Christmas between our oyster-eating country cousins and our turkey and goose loving Londoners. The turkey, the brace of pheasants or hares, has arrived.“Such a present,”says the author of“The Oyster,”“is promptly repaid by a fine cod packed in ice, and two barrels of oysters. How sweet are these when eaten at a country home, and opened by yourselves, the barrel being paraded on the table with its head knocked out, and with the whitest of napkins round it. * * * How sweet it is, too, to open some of the dear natives for your pretty cousin, and to see her open her sweet little mouth about as wide as Lesbia’s sparrow did for his lump of—not sugar, it was not then invented—but lump of honey! How sweet it is, after the young lady has swallowed her half-dozen, to help yourself! The oyster never tastes sweeter[pg 132]than when thus operated on by yourself, so that you do not‘job’the knife into your hand!”The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters, but then they regarded Britain much as we now do Greenland. The Romans, however, highly appreciated them. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, have all enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster; and it was to Sergius Orata that we owe the introduction of oyster-beds, for he it was that invented the layers or stews for oysters at Baia.“That was in the days when luxury was rampant, and when men of great wealth, like Licinius Crassus, the leviathan slave-merchant, rose to the highest honours; for this dealer in human flesh in the boasted land of liberty served the office of consul along with Pompey the Great, and on one occasion required no less than 10,000 tables to accommodate all his guests. How many barrels of oysters were eaten at that celebrated dinner, the‘Ephemerides’—as Plutarch callsThe TimesandMorning Postof that day—have omitted to state; but as oysters then took the place that turtle soup now does at our great City feeds, imagination may busy itself as it likes with the calculation. All we know is, that oysters then fetched very long prices at Rome, as the author of the‘Tabella Ciberia’has not failed to tell us; and then, as now, the high price of any luxury of the table was sure to make a liberal supply of it necessary when a man like Crassus entertained half the city as his guests, to rivet his popularity.“But the Romans had a weakness for the‘breedy creatures’as our dear old friend Christopher North calls them in his inimitable‘Noctes.’In the time of Nero, some sixty years later, the consumption of oysters in the‘Imperial City’was nearly as great as it now is in the‘World’s Metropolis;’and there is a statement, which I remember to have read somewhere, that during the reign of Domitian, the last of the twelve Cæsars, a greater number of millions of bushels were annually consumed at Rome than I should care to swear to. These oysters, however, were but Mediterranean produce—the small fry of Circe, and the smaller Lucrinians; and this unreasonable demand upon them quite[pg 133]exhausted the beds in that great fly-catcher’s reign; and it was not till under the wise administration of Agricola in Britain, when the Romans got their far-famed Rutupians from the shores of Kent, from Richborough, and the Reculvers—theRutupi Portusof the‘Itinerary’of which the latter, the Regulbium, near Whitstable, in the mouth of the Thames, was the northern boundary–thatJuvenal praised them as he does; and he was right; for in the whole world there are no oysters like them; and of all the‘breedy creatures’that glide, or have ever glided, down the throats of the human race, our‘natives’are probably the most delectable.”The Roman emperors later on never failed to have British oysters at their banquets.Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the gourmet who at the firstbite37was able to tell whence the particular breed came.“When I but see the oyster’s shell,I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mudWhere it was raised.”The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater, can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and Colchester“natives,”Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords and“Powldoodies of Burran.”OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months;B, five or six months;C, three or four months;D, one to two months; andE, twenty days after birth.“There is one little spot,”says the author of the entertaining but veracious little work quoted before,“on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river,[pg 134]a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the‘oldest inhabitant,’rented certain oyster-beds, famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians,‘a long time ago,’had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing-smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster-dredger think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores ofulva latissimaandenteromorpha, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for re-shipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by the next morning it would be wise to re-ship his oysters before turning in for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce-looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling-pieces, evidently anticipating the Cornishman’s intention, and determined to frustrate it at all hazards.“‘Whatdo you want here?’he asked of Tyacke.“‘Theoysters I put down to feed,’was the reply;‘they were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to re-ship them, to be in time for to-morrow’s market.’“‘True,’replied the Kentishman,‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about re-shipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do.’“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the‘Beggars’ Opera’put it into verse.”It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—“The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackerel loves the wind,But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,For he comes of a gentle kind.”Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to“an oyster crossed in love.”[pg 135]Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first station in his destined travels in company with his kind, and if it occupies a long time, is attentively supplied with refreshing sea-water. If taken proper care of, he arrives at the wharf as lively as when first taken from his native element. Witness the excellent American“Blue Points,”now commonly sold in England. Arrived in port, the oyster too often, however, first becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery, for here he is shovelled into carts and barrows, and tumbled into sacks, and he may consider himself greatly fortunate if he gets a drink of salted, not sea, water.An old adage tells us that“He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.”Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made.“Once upon a time a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and listening to the murmur of the‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would say, of‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged‘native’for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult, snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth.‘Delightful!’he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes;‘what is this?’and again he sucked his finger. Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the mollusc itself.‘Delicious!’he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we now take it, of‘foaming brown stout’or‘pale Chablis’to wash it down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless man indulge in the first oyster-banquet!”38The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must take themau naturel. In Wilson’s“Noctes Ambrosianæ”we find the following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’ vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the eatin’ of eisters.”Oyster-fishing is pursued in many different ways in different countries. Round Minorca, divers descend, hammer in hand, and bring up as many as they can carry. On the English[pg 136]and French coasts a most destructive process is employed; a dredge-net, heavily weighted with an iron frame, is thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from the bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud.“In France,”says Figuier,“oyster-dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats, each carrying four or five men. At a fixed hour, and under the surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the national flag, the flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark is provided with four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common clasp purse. These dredges are formed of network, with a strong iron frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of acting as a scraper and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels over the oyster-beds.... The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling in, and very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge—seaweeds, star-fishes, lobsters, crabs, actinia, and stones. In this manner the common oyster-beds on both sides of the Channel were ploughed up by the oyster-dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up a field.”The consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly successful in a commercial point of view.In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the Acheron of so many of the classical poets—is a great oyster-park, dating from the days of the Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, shaded by magnificent trees; its greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet; its bottom is black, the mud being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster cultivation there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of Lake Fusaro warehouse, as it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon the bottom of the lake, and all around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and artificial rockeries, surrounded by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one to the other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and twigs. In the spawning season the young fry, issuing from the parents on the stones or rocks, are arrested by these means. They have, as it were, a resting-place provided for them on the piles and faggots.The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded on his study of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that of twenty-three oyster-beds which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, the Isles of Ré and Oleron, only five were left, and that at other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful statement must be made.“The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime populations are now actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster-parks, in imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. In his appeal to the Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration of Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for sowing the whole French coast in such a manner as to re-establish the oyster-banks now in ruins, extend those which were prosperous, and create others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would permit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year in which his report was received operations commenced by planting 3,000,000 mother-oysters which had[pg 137]been dredged in the common ground; brood from the oyster-grounds at Cancale and Tréquiers being distributed in ten longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of shells. At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested, and the dredge in a few minutes brought up 2,000 oysters fit for the table, while two fascines, drawn up at random, contained nearly 20,000, from one to two inches in diameter.”The publicity given to these facts excited great and practical interest, and in a short time the culture assumed gigantic proportions. The Bay of Arcachon was transformed into a vast field of production, no less than 1,200 capitalists, mostly very small ones, associated with an equal number of fishermen, having up to 1870 planted no less than 988 acres of oysters. In this way the State organised two model farms for experimental purposes, at the trifling original cost of £114; it was estimated to be worth £8,000 in 1870, and had 5,000,000 oysters, large and small. 1,200 parks were then in active operations on the Isle of Ré, and 2,000 more in course of construction.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.In our own country the Whitstable Company has been most successful.“The layings at Whitstable,”Mr. Bertram tells us,“occupy about a mile and a half square, and the oyster-beds have been so prosperous as to have obtained the name of the‘happy fishing grounds.’[pg 138]Whitstable lies in a sandy bay formed by a small branch of the Medway, which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland. Throughout this bay, from the town of Whitstable at its eastern extremity to the old town of Faversham, which lies several miles inland, the whole of the estuary is occupied by oyster-farms, on which the maritime population, to the extent of 3,000 people and upwards, is occupied, the sum paid for labour by the various companies being set down at £160,000 per annum, besides the employment given at Whitstable in building and repairing boats, dredges, and other requisites for the oyster-fishing. The business of the various companies is to feed oysters for the London and other markets, to protect the spawn or flotsam, as the dredgers call it, which is emitted on their own beds, and to furnish, by purchase or otherwise, the new brood necessary to supply the beds which have been taken up for consumption.”The little Bay of Pont, on the Essex coast, a piece of water sixteen miles long by three wide, now gives employment to 150 or more boats, the crews of which are exclusively employed in obtaining brood oysters from eighteen months to two years old to supply the oyster farmers.The Thames, or“native”system, is as follows:—Every year there is a regular examination of the beds, which are so carefully dredged that almost every individual oyster is examined. The younger ones are placed where they can thrive best, the same being true of all grades. Dead and sickly oysters are removed, and star-fish and all kinds of enemies killed.THE SCALLOP (Pecten).THE SCALLOP (Pecten).The Scallop (Pecten) is not a true oyster, though it may be cooked and treated like one, with satisfactory results. Its name is derived from the channeled edges and surfaces peculiar to it, which somewhat resemble the arrangements of the teeth of a comb. Centuries ago they were known as Pilgrims’ Shells; for in the middle ages the pilgrims were wont to ornament their habits or hats with these bivalves, of which there are not far from a couple of hundred known species. They are much more lively animals than the oyster, being able to shift about from place to place with some degree of agility; this they do by forcibly ejecting water between their shells, moving on by a kind of recoil. Another curious bivalve mollusc is theSpondylus, a genus found mostly in the warmer seas, some of the species of which are highly prized by conchologists. Their strong, brilliantly-coloured shells bristle with spines and feet. One of the most remarkable species is that known to naturalists asSpondylus regius, at all times scarce, and at one time extremely rare. In connection with the last-named mollusc, a story is told by M. Chenu, regarding an enthusiastic collector.“M. R——,”says Chenu,“was Professor of Botany to the Faculty of Paris, and was, as sometimes happens, more learned than rich; he wished, on the invitation of a stranger, to purchase one of these shells at a very high price, which might be from 3,000 to 6,000 francs (approximately £120 to £240); the bargain was made, and the price agreed upon; it was only necessary to pay. The money in the Professor’s hands made only a part of the sum the merchant was to receive for his shell, and he would not part with it without payment. M. R——, now consulting his desire to possess the shell more than his weak resources, made up secretly a parcel of his scanty plate, and went out to sell it. Without consulting his wife, he replaced his silver plate by articles of tin, and ran to the merchant to secure his coveted Spondylus, which he believed to beS. regius.[pg 139]SPONDYLUS.SPONDYLUS.“The hour of dinner arrived, and we may imagine the astonishment of Madame R——, who could not comprehend the strange metamorphosis of her plate. She delivered herself of a thousand painful conjectures on the subject. M. R——, on his part, returned home happy with his shell, which he had committed to the safe custody of a box placed in his coat pocket. But as he approached the house he paused, and began for the first time to think of the reception he might meet with. The reproaches which awaited him, however, were compensated when he thought of the treasure he carried home. Finally, he reached home, and Madame R——’s wrath was worthy of the occasion; the poor man was overwhelmed with the grief he had caused his wife; his courage altogether forsook him. He forgot his shell, and in his trepidation, seated himself on a chair without the necessary adjustment of his garment. He was only reminded of his treasure by hearing the crushing sound of the breaking box which contained it. Fortunately the damage done was not very great—two spines only of the shell were broken; but the good man’s grief made so great an impression on Madame R——, that she no longer thought of her own loss, but directed all her efforts to console the simple-minded philosopher.”It may be added that these curious bivalve molluscs are very commonly associated with branches of coral, to which they adhere firmly.

CHAPTER XI.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful Sea-anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star-fish—Sea Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship-worm—Their Ravages on the Holland Coast—The Retiring Razor-fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman Estimation of them—The“Breedy Creatures”brought from Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System pursued.Among the interesting and comparatively familiar forms of ocean’s treasures must be counted the Madrepores, often regarded as corals, but quite distinct as a scientific group from the precious coral of commerce. The Madreporidæ are very numerous, and are formed by colonies of polyps. The poet has truly described them:—“I saw the living pile ascendThe mausoleum of its architects,Still dying upward as their labour closed:Slime the material, but the slime was turnedTo adamant by their petrific touch.”[pg 123]The polyps of the madrepores resemble flowers when their upper disc is expanded and their feelers are out in the water. When contracted, they are concealed from sight in the calcareous cells, which have grown with themselves, and form part of the madrepora. These beautiful and curious natural productions assume many distinct forms. Some of them are arborescent, as inStylaster flabelliformis, which puts forth a perfect forest of trunks and branches. Others are star-like in shape; many are more or less cylindrical and oval, as in the well-known“Brain coral”(Meandrina cerebriformis). Another genus is entitledFungia, from a supposed resemblance to the mushroom, there being this difference between terrestrial and marine mushrooms—that the former have leaflets below, and the latter have them above. One of the most pleasing forms is found in the Plantain Madrepore, where the polyps are arranged in tufts.MADREPORES.MADREPORES.The Sea-anemones (Actinidæ) will be now, thanks to the popularity of the aquarium, tolerably familiar to most readers. Although undoubtedly animal, they much more resemble flowers. They are to be found of the most brilliant colours and graceful forms.The body of the Sea-anemone is“cylindrical in form, terminating beneath in a muscular disc, which is generally large and distinct, enabling them to cling vigorously to foreign bodies. It terminates above in an upper disc, bearing many rows of tentacles, which differ from each other only in their size. These tentacles are sometimes decorated with brilliant colours, forming a species of collar, consisting of contractile and sometimes retractile tubes, pierced at their points with an orifice, whence issue jets of water, which are ejected at the will of the animal. Arranged in circles, they are distributed with perfect regularity round a central mouth. These are their arms.”The stomach of the sea-anemone is both the seat of digestion and of reproduction. The young are actually ejected from the mouth with the rejecta of their food.“The daisy-like anemones in the Zoological Gardens of Paris,”Frédol tells us,“frequently throw up young ones, which are dispersed, and attach themselves to various parts of the aquarium, and finally become miniature anemones exactly like the parent. An actinia, which had taken a very copious repast, ejected a portion of it about twenty-four hours later, and in the middle of the ejected food were found thirty-eight young individuals.”According to one author, an accouchement is here a fit of indigestion! Sea-anemones may be mutilated, cut limb from limb, or torn to pieces, and each piece will become a new anemone in the end.“They adhere,”says Dr. Johnson,“to rocks, shells, and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous secretion from their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and remove to another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen ofActinia crassicornisthat might have been originally two inches in diameter,[pg 124]which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve ofPecten maximusof the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was, of course, prevented; yet, instead of emaciating and dying of atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions.”The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are literally killed by contact with them.In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the Green Actinia being in special repute.SEA-ANEMONES.SEA-ANEMONES.1.Actinoloba dianthus. 2.Cereus gemmaceus. 3.Actinia bicolor. 4.Sagartia viduata. 5.Cereus papillossus. 6.Actinia picta. 7.Actinia equina. 8.Sagartia rosea. 9.Sagartia coccinea.The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and cretaceous. It is animated with life.A vast natural group is that of theEchinodermata, which includes five orders, or[pg 125]families, embracing among them the star-fish, the sea-eggs, or sea-urchins, and the sea-cucumbers, or“sea-slugs”(Holothurias), the latter of which are important items in the food of many Asiatics. The generic term Echinodermata signifies an animal bristling with spines, but the group includes many to whom it could not be applied.The Star-fish (Asterias) is met in almost every sea, and in all latitudes, although more richly varied in tropical seas. They vary in colour from a yellowish-grey to orange, red, or violet. The body of the asterias is a most curious organisation, having sometimes as many as 11,000 juxta-imposed pieces, while it possesses spines and tubercles. Observe one stranded on the shore, and it may appear destitute of locomotive powers. But this is not so, for they can slowly creep over small spaces, and even up the vertical sides of rocks. Frédol says:—“If an asterias is turned upon its back, it will at first remain immovable, with its feet shut up. Soon, however, out come the feet like so many little feelers; it moves them backward and forward, as if feeling for the ground; it soon inclines them towards the bottom of the vase, and fixes them one after the other. When it has a sufficient number attached, the animal turns itself round. It is not impossible, whilst walking[pg 126]on the sea-shore, to have the pleasure of seeing one of these star-fishes walking upon the sand,”although they are very commonly left dead there.The star-fish’s mouth is on its lower side, and almost directly abuts on its stomach. It is a voracious feeder, and will even attack molluscs. Formerly it was believed that the animal would open an oyster with one of its rays, or legs, but this was unlikely, as the oyster might be likely enough to have the best of it in such a case by shutting his shells on the intruder. It is now pretty well understood that it injects an acrid poison into the oyster’s shell, which obliges it to open.STAR-FISH.STAR-FISH.The“Urchins”seem to owe their name to Aristotle, and their spiny covering and armature have in all ages attracted the attention of naturalists. Some of them have 3,000 or 4,000 prickles, and their organisation is really wonderful. They are enclosed in a globular hollow box, which grows with their growth. Gosse explains how. The box can never be cast off, and it is obvious that the deposits made from inside would only narrow the space, which really requires to be enlarged.“The growing animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food. Its cry is‘Give me space! a larger house, or I die!’How is this problem solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of the Creator has a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made in one piece, nor in ten, nor a hundred. Six hundred distinct pieces go to make up the hollow case, all accurately fitted together, so that the perfect symmetry of outline remains unbroken; and yet, thin as their substance is, they retain their relative positions with unchanging exactness, and the slight brittle box retains all requisite strength and firmness, for each of these pieces is enveloped by a layer of living flesh; a vascular tissue passes up between the joints, where one meets another, and spreads itself over the whole exterior surface.”Their spines are instruments of defence and of locomotion; each has several muscles to work it.The poet-scientist, Michelet, has beautifully painted the animal’s nature, and makes it describe itself as follows.“I am born,”says the unobtrusive Echinoderm,“without ambition; I ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen the molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls; I have no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out; still less do I desire the grace of your giddy medusas, the waving charm of whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwreck. Oh, mother! I wish for one thing only,to be—to be without these exterior and compromising appendages; to be thickset, strong, and round, for that is the shape in which I should be the least exposed; in short, to be a centralised being. I have very little instinct for travel. To roll sometimes from the surface to the bottom of the sea is enough of travel for me. Glued firmly to my rock, I could there solve the problem, the solution of which your favourite, man, seeks for in vain—that of safety. To strictly exclude enemies and admit all friends, especially water, air, and light, would, I know, cost me some labour and constant effort. Covered with movable spines, enemies will avoid me. Now, bristling like a bear, they call me an urchin.”34URCHINS IN A ROCK.URCHINS IN A ROCK.The term“sea-cucumber”accurately describes the shape of the Holothuria, which is in general terms a worm-like cylinder, varying as much as from an inch or two to[pg 127]thirty, and, in exceptional cases, forty inches in length. The skin of the animal is usually thick and leathery; it is crowned by a mouth with a fringe of tentacula, which expand like a flower when it is unmolested. They particularly avoid the glare of light. One large eatable species is common in the Mediterranean, and is used for food in Naples and elsewhere. But it is in the Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seas that theHolothuria edulis, known there as thetrepang, is an important adjunct to the food of the natives. Thousands of junks are employed in the trepang fisheries. The Malay fisherman will harpoon them with a long bamboo terminating in a sharp hook at a distance of thirty yards. In four or five fathoms of water native divers are employed, who seize them in their hands, and will bring up several at a time. They are then boiled, and flattened with stones; after which process they are spread out on bamboo mats to dry, first in the sun and afterwards by smoking. They are then put in sacks and shipped principally to Chinese ports, where they are considered a luxury.The great French navigator, Dumont d’Urville, witnessed the processes employed while in Raffles Bay. An hour after the arrival of four prows all the men were at work ashore cooking them in boilers placed over roughly-constructed stone furnaces, after which they were dried on hurdled roofs. Captain d’Urville went on board one of the Malay vessels, where he was received with cordiality by the padrone, or captain.“He,”says that navigator,“showed us over his little ship. The keel appeared to us sufficiently solid; even the lines did not want elegance; but great disorder seemed to reign in the stowage department. From a kind of bridge, formed by hurdles of bamboos and junk, we saw the cabin, which looked like a poultry house: bags of rice, packets and boxes were huddled together. Below was the store of water, of cured trepang, and the sailors’ berths. Each boat was furnished with two rudders, one at each end, which lifted itself when the boat touched the bottom. The craft was furnished with two masts, without shrouds, which could be lowered on to the bridge at will by means of a hinge; they carry the ordinary sail; the anchors are of wood, for iron is rarely used by the Malays; their cables are made of rattan fibre; the crew of each bark consists of about thirty-seven, each shore boat having a crew of six men. At the moment of our visit they were all occupied in fishing operations, some of them being anchored very near to us. Seven or eight of their number, nearly naked, were diving for trepang; the padrone alone was unoccupied. An ardent sun darted its rays upon their heads without appearing to incommode them, an exposure which no European could hold up under. It was near mid-day, and the moment, as our Malay captain assured us, most favourable for the fishing. In fact, we saw that each diver returned to the surface with at least one animal, and sometimes two, in his hands. It appears that the higher the sun is above the horizon, the more easily is the creature distinguished at the bottom. The divers were so rapid in their movements that they scarcely touched the boat, into which they threw the animals before they dived again. When the boat was filled with them, it proceeded to the shore, and its place was supplied by an empty one.”The Holothuria taken there were five to six inches long. D’Urville tasted it when prepared, and says that it resembled lobster. His men, however, took more kindly to it than did he.SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).We must now examine a most important class of pulpy animals, the Mollusca,[pg 128]of which the bivalve molluscs are by far the most important to man. In consequence of their very softness and delicacy, Nature has provided them with a shell coat of calcareous mail.The sub-classAcephala, are as their names indicate,headlessmolluscs, and though sometimespartiallynaked, are usually very well protected by shells. When it is known that there are over 4,000 species of bivalve molluscs, the impossibility of describing more than a few typical and prominent examples will be seen.The genusTeredoconsists of marine worm-like animals having a special and irresistible inclination for boring wood, whatever its hardness. Ships have been thus silently and secretly undermined, till the planks have been either like sponges or have crumbled into dust under the very feet of their crews. The holes bored by these imperceptible miners riddle the entire interior of a piece of wood, without any external indication of their ravages. Piles and piers have been utterly ruined, and vessels have sometimes gone to the bottom through them. At the beginning of the last century half the coast of Holland was threatened with inundation and practical annihilation because the piles which support its dykes were attacked by the teredo, and hundreds of thousands of pounds damage was done by this wretched worm. It has been now discovered that the worm has a great antipathy to oxide of iron, and wood impregnated with it is secure from its ravages. Other animals of the same group are capable of boring even rock.Another important bivalve is the well known Solen or“razor-fish,”varieties of which are common all over the globe.“These molluscs,”says Figuier,“live with their shells buried vertically in the sand, a short distance from the shore; the hole which they have hollowed, and which they never quit, sometimes attains as much as two yards in depth; by means of their foot, which is large, conical, swollen in the middle and pointed at its extremity, they raise themselves with great agility to the entrance of their burrow. They bury themselves rapidly, and disappear on the slightest approach of danger.“When the sea retires, the presence of the Solen is indicated by a small orifice in the[pg 129]sand, whence escape at intervals bubbles of air. In order to attract them to the surface, the fishermen throw into the hole a pinch of salt; the sand immediately becomes stirred, and the animal presents itself just above the point of its shell. It must be seized at once, for it disappears again very quickly, and no renewed efforts will bring it to the surface a second time. Its retreat is commonly cut short by a knife being passed below it; for it burrows into the ground with such velocity that it is difficult to capture it with the hand alone. The fish itself is a kind of marine worm.”THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).But of the Acephalous Mollusca none are more important to man than the mussel and oyster, the pearl-bearing varieties of which latter have been already considered. Both are familiar to every reader.TheMytilus edulis, the edible mussel of commerce, the“poor man’s oyster,”is provided with a byssus, a bundle of hairs or threads, by which it can anchor to the rock. In its natural state it is much less fitted for human food than when cultivated. Their civilisation, as it might be termed, dates back to the year 1236, when the master of a barque, an Irishman named Walton, was wrecked in the bay or creek of Aiguillon, a few miles distant from Rochelle. The exile at first supported himself by hunting sea-fowl in the neighbouring marshes, where he also soon began, being an observant man, to notice certain peculiarities of mussel life.THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).Walton remarked that many of the mussels attached themselves by preference to that part of posts or stones a littleabovethe mud of the marshes, and that those so situated soon became plumper and fatter, and more suitable for edible purposes, than those buriedinthe mud. He soon saw the possibilities of a new branch of industry.“The practices he introduced,”wrote a distinguished French writer, long ago,“were so happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created for a numerous population is governed.”He placed long rows of twelve-foot posts, about six feet high out of the watery mud, and a yard apart, each pair of which always formed a letter V; in other words, a number of them radiated from a common centre. The posts were interlaced with a basket-work of branches, so as to form continuous hurdles; these are now termedbouchots. He also had isolated posts, and one of his great ideas was, as in oyster culture to-day, to arrest the spat, which[pg 130]would otherwise have washed away to sea with the tide, and been lost.“At the present time these lines of hurdles form a perfect little forest at Aiguillon; there are about a quarter of a million piles alone. In July thebouchotiers, as the men employed in this culture are termed, launch their punts, and proceeding to the marshes, detach with a hook the thickly agglomerated masses of young mussels from the piles, which they gather in baskets and take to the bouchots, which form a perfect hedge of fascines and branches, of different heights. Each stage receives the mollusc suitable to it. In the first stage of its existence the mussel cannot endure exposure to the air, and remains constantly under water, except at the period of spring tides. These are gathered in sacks made of old matting, or suspended in interstices of the basket-work. The mussels are advanced stage after stage until they reach the highest bouchots, which remain out of water at all tides.”The whole bay yielded close on half a million pounds sterling some years ago.“While,”says Figuier,“commending the mussel as an important article of food, we must not conceal the fact that it has produced in certain persons very grave effects, showing that for them its flesh has the effects of poison. The symptoms, commonly observed two or three hours after the repast, are weakness or torpor, constriction of the throat and swelling of the head, accompanied by great thirst, nausea, frequent vomitings, and eruptions of the skin and severe itching.“The cause of these attacks is not very well ascertained; they have in turn been ascribed to the presence of the coppery pyrites in the neighbourhood of the mussel; to certain small crabs which lodge themselves as parasites in the shell of the mussel; to the spawn of star-fish or medusæ that the mussel may have swallowed. But, probably the true cause of this kind of poisoning is found in the predisposition of individuals. The remedy is very simple; an emetic, accompanied by drinking plentifully of slightly acidulated beverage.”They are eaten very freely in most parts of the seaboard of the United States, and the present writer has eaten them constantly, boiled, stewed with tomatoes, &c., and in soup, without the slightest bad effects.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.Thebivalvepar excellencemust always beOstrea edulis, the common oyster. This mollusc, which some might be inclined to place low in the scale of nature, has really a complex and delicate organisation. It has a mouth, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines; its blood is colourless, but it has a true circulation; and it breathes under water, as do fishes.“Having no head,”says Figuier,“the oyster can have no brain; the nerves originate near the mouth, where a great ganglion is visible, whence issue a pair of nerves which distribute themselves in the regions of the stomach and liver, terminating in a second ganglion, situated behind the liver. The first nervous branch distributes its sensibility to the mouth and tentacles; the second, to the respiratory branchiæ. With organs of the senses oysters are unprovided. Condemned to a sedentary life, riveted to a rock, where they have been rooted, as it were, in their infancy, they neither see nor hear; touch appears to be their only sense, and that is placed in the labial tentacles of the mouth.”The oyster may carry hundreds of thousands of eggs—some say as many as 2,000,000; it ejects them after a process of incubation. Nothing is more curious than to witness a bank of oysters in the spawning season, which is usually from the month of June to the end of Septem[pg 131]ber.35Every adult—for the oyster is sexless—throws forth a living dust, a perfect cloud of embryotic life. The spat is soon scattered far and wide, and unless the young oyster attach itself to some solid body, it falls a victim to other marine animals. Microscopic in size when it leaves the parent, it is at the end of a month about the size of a large pea; in a year it may be an inch and a half in diameter; in three it is getting on to a quite respectable size, and after a short course in the oyster park it is ready for the table.36Oysters are of all sizes, and there are some so large that they require to be carved. In New York, the paradise of oyster-eaters, they range from the size of a half-crown to five or six inches long. The shores of Long Island, a distance round of 115 miles, are one continuous oyster-field, while the one State of Virginia is said to possess nearly 2,000,000 acres of oyster-beds. The Americans are great lovers of the bivalve, which is probably one of the most wholesome forms ofeasynourishment which can possibly be taken. In a stew with milk, and a little oatmeal, or as soup, they are especially good for invalids, and when one can take nothing else, he can usually relish oysters. And, as all gastronomers know, they rather increase than diminish appetite; hence the modern French practice of taking half a dozenbeforethe soup is served.“There is no alimentary substance,”says a French writer,“not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances; but oysters never.... We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always and in profusion, without fear of indigestion.”The few who cannot eat them, and therearesuch, are really to be commiserated. How highly they are esteemed in some countries is shown by the fact that some years ago they cost in St. Petersburg a paper rouble, or about a shillingeach; in Stockholm, fivepence each. In England only two or three years ago they had risen to nearly four-fifths of the latter price; but now, thanks to the extensive cultivation, and to the importation of excellent American oysters on a large scale, they are within the reach of all.Of the quantity of oysters consumed in London alone who can give even an approximate guess? Fancy, if you can, also, that curiously courteous exchange which goes on every Christmas between our oyster-eating country cousins and our turkey and goose loving Londoners. The turkey, the brace of pheasants or hares, has arrived.“Such a present,”says the author of“The Oyster,”“is promptly repaid by a fine cod packed in ice, and two barrels of oysters. How sweet are these when eaten at a country home, and opened by yourselves, the barrel being paraded on the table with its head knocked out, and with the whitest of napkins round it. * * * How sweet it is, too, to open some of the dear natives for your pretty cousin, and to see her open her sweet little mouth about as wide as Lesbia’s sparrow did for his lump of—not sugar, it was not then invented—but lump of honey! How sweet it is, after the young lady has swallowed her half-dozen, to help yourself! The oyster never tastes sweeter[pg 132]than when thus operated on by yourself, so that you do not‘job’the knife into your hand!”The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters, but then they regarded Britain much as we now do Greenland. The Romans, however, highly appreciated them. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, have all enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster; and it was to Sergius Orata that we owe the introduction of oyster-beds, for he it was that invented the layers or stews for oysters at Baia.“That was in the days when luxury was rampant, and when men of great wealth, like Licinius Crassus, the leviathan slave-merchant, rose to the highest honours; for this dealer in human flesh in the boasted land of liberty served the office of consul along with Pompey the Great, and on one occasion required no less than 10,000 tables to accommodate all his guests. How many barrels of oysters were eaten at that celebrated dinner, the‘Ephemerides’—as Plutarch callsThe TimesandMorning Postof that day—have omitted to state; but as oysters then took the place that turtle soup now does at our great City feeds, imagination may busy itself as it likes with the calculation. All we know is, that oysters then fetched very long prices at Rome, as the author of the‘Tabella Ciberia’has not failed to tell us; and then, as now, the high price of any luxury of the table was sure to make a liberal supply of it necessary when a man like Crassus entertained half the city as his guests, to rivet his popularity.“But the Romans had a weakness for the‘breedy creatures’as our dear old friend Christopher North calls them in his inimitable‘Noctes.’In the time of Nero, some sixty years later, the consumption of oysters in the‘Imperial City’was nearly as great as it now is in the‘World’s Metropolis;’and there is a statement, which I remember to have read somewhere, that during the reign of Domitian, the last of the twelve Cæsars, a greater number of millions of bushels were annually consumed at Rome than I should care to swear to. These oysters, however, were but Mediterranean produce—the small fry of Circe, and the smaller Lucrinians; and this unreasonable demand upon them quite[pg 133]exhausted the beds in that great fly-catcher’s reign; and it was not till under the wise administration of Agricola in Britain, when the Romans got their far-famed Rutupians from the shores of Kent, from Richborough, and the Reculvers—theRutupi Portusof the‘Itinerary’of which the latter, the Regulbium, near Whitstable, in the mouth of the Thames, was the northern boundary–thatJuvenal praised them as he does; and he was right; for in the whole world there are no oysters like them; and of all the‘breedy creatures’that glide, or have ever glided, down the throats of the human race, our‘natives’are probably the most delectable.”The Roman emperors later on never failed to have British oysters at their banquets.Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the gourmet who at the firstbite37was able to tell whence the particular breed came.“When I but see the oyster’s shell,I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mudWhere it was raised.”The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater, can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and Colchester“natives,”Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords and“Powldoodies of Burran.”OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months;B, five or six months;C, three or four months;D, one to two months; andE, twenty days after birth.“There is one little spot,”says the author of the entertaining but veracious little work quoted before,“on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river,[pg 134]a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the‘oldest inhabitant,’rented certain oyster-beds, famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians,‘a long time ago,’had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing-smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster-dredger think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores ofulva latissimaandenteromorpha, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for re-shipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by the next morning it would be wise to re-ship his oysters before turning in for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce-looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling-pieces, evidently anticipating the Cornishman’s intention, and determined to frustrate it at all hazards.“‘Whatdo you want here?’he asked of Tyacke.“‘Theoysters I put down to feed,’was the reply;‘they were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to re-ship them, to be in time for to-morrow’s market.’“‘True,’replied the Kentishman,‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about re-shipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do.’“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the‘Beggars’ Opera’put it into verse.”It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—“The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackerel loves the wind,But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,For he comes of a gentle kind.”Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to“an oyster crossed in love.”[pg 135]Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first station in his destined travels in company with his kind, and if it occupies a long time, is attentively supplied with refreshing sea-water. If taken proper care of, he arrives at the wharf as lively as when first taken from his native element. Witness the excellent American“Blue Points,”now commonly sold in England. Arrived in port, the oyster too often, however, first becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery, for here he is shovelled into carts and barrows, and tumbled into sacks, and he may consider himself greatly fortunate if he gets a drink of salted, not sea, water.An old adage tells us that“He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.”Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made.“Once upon a time a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and listening to the murmur of the‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would say, of‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged‘native’for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult, snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth.‘Delightful!’he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes;‘what is this?’and again he sucked his finger. Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the mollusc itself.‘Delicious!’he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we now take it, of‘foaming brown stout’or‘pale Chablis’to wash it down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless man indulge in the first oyster-banquet!”38The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must take themau naturel. In Wilson’s“Noctes Ambrosianæ”we find the following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’ vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the eatin’ of eisters.”Oyster-fishing is pursued in many different ways in different countries. Round Minorca, divers descend, hammer in hand, and bring up as many as they can carry. On the English[pg 136]and French coasts a most destructive process is employed; a dredge-net, heavily weighted with an iron frame, is thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from the bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud.“In France,”says Figuier,“oyster-dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats, each carrying four or five men. At a fixed hour, and under the surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the national flag, the flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark is provided with four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common clasp purse. These dredges are formed of network, with a strong iron frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of acting as a scraper and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels over the oyster-beds.... The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling in, and very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge—seaweeds, star-fishes, lobsters, crabs, actinia, and stones. In this manner the common oyster-beds on both sides of the Channel were ploughed up by the oyster-dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up a field.”The consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly successful in a commercial point of view.In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the Acheron of so many of the classical poets—is a great oyster-park, dating from the days of the Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, shaded by magnificent trees; its greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet; its bottom is black, the mud being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster cultivation there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of Lake Fusaro warehouse, as it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon the bottom of the lake, and all around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and artificial rockeries, surrounded by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one to the other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and twigs. In the spawning season the young fry, issuing from the parents on the stones or rocks, are arrested by these means. They have, as it were, a resting-place provided for them on the piles and faggots.The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded on his study of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that of twenty-three oyster-beds which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, the Isles of Ré and Oleron, only five were left, and that at other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful statement must be made.“The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime populations are now actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster-parks, in imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. In his appeal to the Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration of Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for sowing the whole French coast in such a manner as to re-establish the oyster-banks now in ruins, extend those which were prosperous, and create others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would permit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year in which his report was received operations commenced by planting 3,000,000 mother-oysters which had[pg 137]been dredged in the common ground; brood from the oyster-grounds at Cancale and Tréquiers being distributed in ten longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of shells. At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested, and the dredge in a few minutes brought up 2,000 oysters fit for the table, while two fascines, drawn up at random, contained nearly 20,000, from one to two inches in diameter.”The publicity given to these facts excited great and practical interest, and in a short time the culture assumed gigantic proportions. The Bay of Arcachon was transformed into a vast field of production, no less than 1,200 capitalists, mostly very small ones, associated with an equal number of fishermen, having up to 1870 planted no less than 988 acres of oysters. In this way the State organised two model farms for experimental purposes, at the trifling original cost of £114; it was estimated to be worth £8,000 in 1870, and had 5,000,000 oysters, large and small. 1,200 parks were then in active operations on the Isle of Ré, and 2,000 more in course of construction.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.In our own country the Whitstable Company has been most successful.“The layings at Whitstable,”Mr. Bertram tells us,“occupy about a mile and a half square, and the oyster-beds have been so prosperous as to have obtained the name of the‘happy fishing grounds.’[pg 138]Whitstable lies in a sandy bay formed by a small branch of the Medway, which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland. Throughout this bay, from the town of Whitstable at its eastern extremity to the old town of Faversham, which lies several miles inland, the whole of the estuary is occupied by oyster-farms, on which the maritime population, to the extent of 3,000 people and upwards, is occupied, the sum paid for labour by the various companies being set down at £160,000 per annum, besides the employment given at Whitstable in building and repairing boats, dredges, and other requisites for the oyster-fishing. The business of the various companies is to feed oysters for the London and other markets, to protect the spawn or flotsam, as the dredgers call it, which is emitted on their own beds, and to furnish, by purchase or otherwise, the new brood necessary to supply the beds which have been taken up for consumption.”The little Bay of Pont, on the Essex coast, a piece of water sixteen miles long by three wide, now gives employment to 150 or more boats, the crews of which are exclusively employed in obtaining brood oysters from eighteen months to two years old to supply the oyster farmers.The Thames, or“native”system, is as follows:—Every year there is a regular examination of the beds, which are so carefully dredged that almost every individual oyster is examined. The younger ones are placed where they can thrive best, the same being true of all grades. Dead and sickly oysters are removed, and star-fish and all kinds of enemies killed.THE SCALLOP (Pecten).THE SCALLOP (Pecten).The Scallop (Pecten) is not a true oyster, though it may be cooked and treated like one, with satisfactory results. Its name is derived from the channeled edges and surfaces peculiar to it, which somewhat resemble the arrangements of the teeth of a comb. Centuries ago they were known as Pilgrims’ Shells; for in the middle ages the pilgrims were wont to ornament their habits or hats with these bivalves, of which there are not far from a couple of hundred known species. They are much more lively animals than the oyster, being able to shift about from place to place with some degree of agility; this they do by forcibly ejecting water between their shells, moving on by a kind of recoil. Another curious bivalve mollusc is theSpondylus, a genus found mostly in the warmer seas, some of the species of which are highly prized by conchologists. Their strong, brilliantly-coloured shells bristle with spines and feet. One of the most remarkable species is that known to naturalists asSpondylus regius, at all times scarce, and at one time extremely rare. In connection with the last-named mollusc, a story is told by M. Chenu, regarding an enthusiastic collector.“M. R——,”says Chenu,“was Professor of Botany to the Faculty of Paris, and was, as sometimes happens, more learned than rich; he wished, on the invitation of a stranger, to purchase one of these shells at a very high price, which might be from 3,000 to 6,000 francs (approximately £120 to £240); the bargain was made, and the price agreed upon; it was only necessary to pay. The money in the Professor’s hands made only a part of the sum the merchant was to receive for his shell, and he would not part with it without payment. M. R——, now consulting his desire to possess the shell more than his weak resources, made up secretly a parcel of his scanty plate, and went out to sell it. Without consulting his wife, he replaced his silver plate by articles of tin, and ran to the merchant to secure his coveted Spondylus, which he believed to beS. regius.[pg 139]SPONDYLUS.SPONDYLUS.“The hour of dinner arrived, and we may imagine the astonishment of Madame R——, who could not comprehend the strange metamorphosis of her plate. She delivered herself of a thousand painful conjectures on the subject. M. R——, on his part, returned home happy with his shell, which he had committed to the safe custody of a box placed in his coat pocket. But as he approached the house he paused, and began for the first time to think of the reception he might meet with. The reproaches which awaited him, however, were compensated when he thought of the treasure he carried home. Finally, he reached home, and Madame R——’s wrath was worthy of the occasion; the poor man was overwhelmed with the grief he had caused his wife; his courage altogether forsook him. He forgot his shell, and in his trepidation, seated himself on a chair without the necessary adjustment of his garment. He was only reminded of his treasure by hearing the crushing sound of the breaking box which contained it. Fortunately the damage done was not very great—two spines only of the shell were broken; but the good man’s grief made so great an impression on Madame R——, that she no longer thought of her own loss, but directed all her efforts to console the simple-minded philosopher.”It may be added that these curious bivalve molluscs are very commonly associated with branches of coral, to which they adhere firmly.

CHAPTER XI.The Ocean and its Living Wonders(continued).The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful Sea-anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star-fish—Sea Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship-worm—Their Ravages on the Holland Coast—The Retiring Razor-fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman Estimation of them—The“Breedy Creatures”brought from Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System pursued.Among the interesting and comparatively familiar forms of ocean’s treasures must be counted the Madrepores, often regarded as corals, but quite distinct as a scientific group from the precious coral of commerce. The Madreporidæ are very numerous, and are formed by colonies of polyps. The poet has truly described them:—“I saw the living pile ascendThe mausoleum of its architects,Still dying upward as their labour closed:Slime the material, but the slime was turnedTo adamant by their petrific touch.”[pg 123]The polyps of the madrepores resemble flowers when their upper disc is expanded and their feelers are out in the water. When contracted, they are concealed from sight in the calcareous cells, which have grown with themselves, and form part of the madrepora. These beautiful and curious natural productions assume many distinct forms. Some of them are arborescent, as inStylaster flabelliformis, which puts forth a perfect forest of trunks and branches. Others are star-like in shape; many are more or less cylindrical and oval, as in the well-known“Brain coral”(Meandrina cerebriformis). Another genus is entitledFungia, from a supposed resemblance to the mushroom, there being this difference between terrestrial and marine mushrooms—that the former have leaflets below, and the latter have them above. One of the most pleasing forms is found in the Plantain Madrepore, where the polyps are arranged in tufts.MADREPORES.MADREPORES.The Sea-anemones (Actinidæ) will be now, thanks to the popularity of the aquarium, tolerably familiar to most readers. Although undoubtedly animal, they much more resemble flowers. They are to be found of the most brilliant colours and graceful forms.The body of the Sea-anemone is“cylindrical in form, terminating beneath in a muscular disc, which is generally large and distinct, enabling them to cling vigorously to foreign bodies. It terminates above in an upper disc, bearing many rows of tentacles, which differ from each other only in their size. These tentacles are sometimes decorated with brilliant colours, forming a species of collar, consisting of contractile and sometimes retractile tubes, pierced at their points with an orifice, whence issue jets of water, which are ejected at the will of the animal. Arranged in circles, they are distributed with perfect regularity round a central mouth. These are their arms.”The stomach of the sea-anemone is both the seat of digestion and of reproduction. The young are actually ejected from the mouth with the rejecta of their food.“The daisy-like anemones in the Zoological Gardens of Paris,”Frédol tells us,“frequently throw up young ones, which are dispersed, and attach themselves to various parts of the aquarium, and finally become miniature anemones exactly like the parent. An actinia, which had taken a very copious repast, ejected a portion of it about twenty-four hours later, and in the middle of the ejected food were found thirty-eight young individuals.”According to one author, an accouchement is here a fit of indigestion! Sea-anemones may be mutilated, cut limb from limb, or torn to pieces, and each piece will become a new anemone in the end.“They adhere,”says Dr. Johnson,“to rocks, shells, and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous secretion from their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and remove to another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen ofActinia crassicornisthat might have been originally two inches in diameter,[pg 124]which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve ofPecten maximusof the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was, of course, prevented; yet, instead of emaciating and dying of atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions.”The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are literally killed by contact with them.In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the Green Actinia being in special repute.SEA-ANEMONES.SEA-ANEMONES.1.Actinoloba dianthus. 2.Cereus gemmaceus. 3.Actinia bicolor. 4.Sagartia viduata. 5.Cereus papillossus. 6.Actinia picta. 7.Actinia equina. 8.Sagartia rosea. 9.Sagartia coccinea.The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and cretaceous. It is animated with life.A vast natural group is that of theEchinodermata, which includes five orders, or[pg 125]families, embracing among them the star-fish, the sea-eggs, or sea-urchins, and the sea-cucumbers, or“sea-slugs”(Holothurias), the latter of which are important items in the food of many Asiatics. The generic term Echinodermata signifies an animal bristling with spines, but the group includes many to whom it could not be applied.The Star-fish (Asterias) is met in almost every sea, and in all latitudes, although more richly varied in tropical seas. They vary in colour from a yellowish-grey to orange, red, or violet. The body of the asterias is a most curious organisation, having sometimes as many as 11,000 juxta-imposed pieces, while it possesses spines and tubercles. Observe one stranded on the shore, and it may appear destitute of locomotive powers. But this is not so, for they can slowly creep over small spaces, and even up the vertical sides of rocks. Frédol says:—“If an asterias is turned upon its back, it will at first remain immovable, with its feet shut up. Soon, however, out come the feet like so many little feelers; it moves them backward and forward, as if feeling for the ground; it soon inclines them towards the bottom of the vase, and fixes them one after the other. When it has a sufficient number attached, the animal turns itself round. It is not impossible, whilst walking[pg 126]on the sea-shore, to have the pleasure of seeing one of these star-fishes walking upon the sand,”although they are very commonly left dead there.The star-fish’s mouth is on its lower side, and almost directly abuts on its stomach. It is a voracious feeder, and will even attack molluscs. Formerly it was believed that the animal would open an oyster with one of its rays, or legs, but this was unlikely, as the oyster might be likely enough to have the best of it in such a case by shutting his shells on the intruder. It is now pretty well understood that it injects an acrid poison into the oyster’s shell, which obliges it to open.STAR-FISH.STAR-FISH.The“Urchins”seem to owe their name to Aristotle, and their spiny covering and armature have in all ages attracted the attention of naturalists. Some of them have 3,000 or 4,000 prickles, and their organisation is really wonderful. They are enclosed in a globular hollow box, which grows with their growth. Gosse explains how. The box can never be cast off, and it is obvious that the deposits made from inside would only narrow the space, which really requires to be enlarged.“The growing animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food. Its cry is‘Give me space! a larger house, or I die!’How is this problem solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of the Creator has a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made in one piece, nor in ten, nor a hundred. Six hundred distinct pieces go to make up the hollow case, all accurately fitted together, so that the perfect symmetry of outline remains unbroken; and yet, thin as their substance is, they retain their relative positions with unchanging exactness, and the slight brittle box retains all requisite strength and firmness, for each of these pieces is enveloped by a layer of living flesh; a vascular tissue passes up between the joints, where one meets another, and spreads itself over the whole exterior surface.”Their spines are instruments of defence and of locomotion; each has several muscles to work it.The poet-scientist, Michelet, has beautifully painted the animal’s nature, and makes it describe itself as follows.“I am born,”says the unobtrusive Echinoderm,“without ambition; I ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen the molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls; I have no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out; still less do I desire the grace of your giddy medusas, the waving charm of whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwreck. Oh, mother! I wish for one thing only,to be—to be without these exterior and compromising appendages; to be thickset, strong, and round, for that is the shape in which I should be the least exposed; in short, to be a centralised being. I have very little instinct for travel. To roll sometimes from the surface to the bottom of the sea is enough of travel for me. Glued firmly to my rock, I could there solve the problem, the solution of which your favourite, man, seeks for in vain—that of safety. To strictly exclude enemies and admit all friends, especially water, air, and light, would, I know, cost me some labour and constant effort. Covered with movable spines, enemies will avoid me. Now, bristling like a bear, they call me an urchin.”34URCHINS IN A ROCK.URCHINS IN A ROCK.The term“sea-cucumber”accurately describes the shape of the Holothuria, which is in general terms a worm-like cylinder, varying as much as from an inch or two to[pg 127]thirty, and, in exceptional cases, forty inches in length. The skin of the animal is usually thick and leathery; it is crowned by a mouth with a fringe of tentacula, which expand like a flower when it is unmolested. They particularly avoid the glare of light. One large eatable species is common in the Mediterranean, and is used for food in Naples and elsewhere. But it is in the Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seas that theHolothuria edulis, known there as thetrepang, is an important adjunct to the food of the natives. Thousands of junks are employed in the trepang fisheries. The Malay fisherman will harpoon them with a long bamboo terminating in a sharp hook at a distance of thirty yards. In four or five fathoms of water native divers are employed, who seize them in their hands, and will bring up several at a time. They are then boiled, and flattened with stones; after which process they are spread out on bamboo mats to dry, first in the sun and afterwards by smoking. They are then put in sacks and shipped principally to Chinese ports, where they are considered a luxury.The great French navigator, Dumont d’Urville, witnessed the processes employed while in Raffles Bay. An hour after the arrival of four prows all the men were at work ashore cooking them in boilers placed over roughly-constructed stone furnaces, after which they were dried on hurdled roofs. Captain d’Urville went on board one of the Malay vessels, where he was received with cordiality by the padrone, or captain.“He,”says that navigator,“showed us over his little ship. The keel appeared to us sufficiently solid; even the lines did not want elegance; but great disorder seemed to reign in the stowage department. From a kind of bridge, formed by hurdles of bamboos and junk, we saw the cabin, which looked like a poultry house: bags of rice, packets and boxes were huddled together. Below was the store of water, of cured trepang, and the sailors’ berths. Each boat was furnished with two rudders, one at each end, which lifted itself when the boat touched the bottom. The craft was furnished with two masts, without shrouds, which could be lowered on to the bridge at will by means of a hinge; they carry the ordinary sail; the anchors are of wood, for iron is rarely used by the Malays; their cables are made of rattan fibre; the crew of each bark consists of about thirty-seven, each shore boat having a crew of six men. At the moment of our visit they were all occupied in fishing operations, some of them being anchored very near to us. Seven or eight of their number, nearly naked, were diving for trepang; the padrone alone was unoccupied. An ardent sun darted its rays upon their heads without appearing to incommode them, an exposure which no European could hold up under. It was near mid-day, and the moment, as our Malay captain assured us, most favourable for the fishing. In fact, we saw that each diver returned to the surface with at least one animal, and sometimes two, in his hands. It appears that the higher the sun is above the horizon, the more easily is the creature distinguished at the bottom. The divers were so rapid in their movements that they scarcely touched the boat, into which they threw the animals before they dived again. When the boat was filled with them, it proceeded to the shore, and its place was supplied by an empty one.”The Holothuria taken there were five to six inches long. D’Urville tasted it when prepared, and says that it resembled lobster. His men, however, took more kindly to it than did he.SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).We must now examine a most important class of pulpy animals, the Mollusca,[pg 128]of which the bivalve molluscs are by far the most important to man. In consequence of their very softness and delicacy, Nature has provided them with a shell coat of calcareous mail.The sub-classAcephala, are as their names indicate,headlessmolluscs, and though sometimespartiallynaked, are usually very well protected by shells. When it is known that there are over 4,000 species of bivalve molluscs, the impossibility of describing more than a few typical and prominent examples will be seen.The genusTeredoconsists of marine worm-like animals having a special and irresistible inclination for boring wood, whatever its hardness. Ships have been thus silently and secretly undermined, till the planks have been either like sponges or have crumbled into dust under the very feet of their crews. The holes bored by these imperceptible miners riddle the entire interior of a piece of wood, without any external indication of their ravages. Piles and piers have been utterly ruined, and vessels have sometimes gone to the bottom through them. At the beginning of the last century half the coast of Holland was threatened with inundation and practical annihilation because the piles which support its dykes were attacked by the teredo, and hundreds of thousands of pounds damage was done by this wretched worm. It has been now discovered that the worm has a great antipathy to oxide of iron, and wood impregnated with it is secure from its ravages. Other animals of the same group are capable of boring even rock.Another important bivalve is the well known Solen or“razor-fish,”varieties of which are common all over the globe.“These molluscs,”says Figuier,“live with their shells buried vertically in the sand, a short distance from the shore; the hole which they have hollowed, and which they never quit, sometimes attains as much as two yards in depth; by means of their foot, which is large, conical, swollen in the middle and pointed at its extremity, they raise themselves with great agility to the entrance of their burrow. They bury themselves rapidly, and disappear on the slightest approach of danger.“When the sea retires, the presence of the Solen is indicated by a small orifice in the[pg 129]sand, whence escape at intervals bubbles of air. In order to attract them to the surface, the fishermen throw into the hole a pinch of salt; the sand immediately becomes stirred, and the animal presents itself just above the point of its shell. It must be seized at once, for it disappears again very quickly, and no renewed efforts will bring it to the surface a second time. Its retreat is commonly cut short by a knife being passed below it; for it burrows into the ground with such velocity that it is difficult to capture it with the hand alone. The fish itself is a kind of marine worm.”THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).But of the Acephalous Mollusca none are more important to man than the mussel and oyster, the pearl-bearing varieties of which latter have been already considered. Both are familiar to every reader.TheMytilus edulis, the edible mussel of commerce, the“poor man’s oyster,”is provided with a byssus, a bundle of hairs or threads, by which it can anchor to the rock. In its natural state it is much less fitted for human food than when cultivated. Their civilisation, as it might be termed, dates back to the year 1236, when the master of a barque, an Irishman named Walton, was wrecked in the bay or creek of Aiguillon, a few miles distant from Rochelle. The exile at first supported himself by hunting sea-fowl in the neighbouring marshes, where he also soon began, being an observant man, to notice certain peculiarities of mussel life.THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).Walton remarked that many of the mussels attached themselves by preference to that part of posts or stones a littleabovethe mud of the marshes, and that those so situated soon became plumper and fatter, and more suitable for edible purposes, than those buriedinthe mud. He soon saw the possibilities of a new branch of industry.“The practices he introduced,”wrote a distinguished French writer, long ago,“were so happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created for a numerous population is governed.”He placed long rows of twelve-foot posts, about six feet high out of the watery mud, and a yard apart, each pair of which always formed a letter V; in other words, a number of them radiated from a common centre. The posts were interlaced with a basket-work of branches, so as to form continuous hurdles; these are now termedbouchots. He also had isolated posts, and one of his great ideas was, as in oyster culture to-day, to arrest the spat, which[pg 130]would otherwise have washed away to sea with the tide, and been lost.“At the present time these lines of hurdles form a perfect little forest at Aiguillon; there are about a quarter of a million piles alone. In July thebouchotiers, as the men employed in this culture are termed, launch their punts, and proceeding to the marshes, detach with a hook the thickly agglomerated masses of young mussels from the piles, which they gather in baskets and take to the bouchots, which form a perfect hedge of fascines and branches, of different heights. Each stage receives the mollusc suitable to it. In the first stage of its existence the mussel cannot endure exposure to the air, and remains constantly under water, except at the period of spring tides. These are gathered in sacks made of old matting, or suspended in interstices of the basket-work. The mussels are advanced stage after stage until they reach the highest bouchots, which remain out of water at all tides.”The whole bay yielded close on half a million pounds sterling some years ago.“While,”says Figuier,“commending the mussel as an important article of food, we must not conceal the fact that it has produced in certain persons very grave effects, showing that for them its flesh has the effects of poison. The symptoms, commonly observed two or three hours after the repast, are weakness or torpor, constriction of the throat and swelling of the head, accompanied by great thirst, nausea, frequent vomitings, and eruptions of the skin and severe itching.“The cause of these attacks is not very well ascertained; they have in turn been ascribed to the presence of the coppery pyrites in the neighbourhood of the mussel; to certain small crabs which lodge themselves as parasites in the shell of the mussel; to the spawn of star-fish or medusæ that the mussel may have swallowed. But, probably the true cause of this kind of poisoning is found in the predisposition of individuals. The remedy is very simple; an emetic, accompanied by drinking plentifully of slightly acidulated beverage.”They are eaten very freely in most parts of the seaboard of the United States, and the present writer has eaten them constantly, boiled, stewed with tomatoes, &c., and in soup, without the slightest bad effects.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.Thebivalvepar excellencemust always beOstrea edulis, the common oyster. This mollusc, which some might be inclined to place low in the scale of nature, has really a complex and delicate organisation. It has a mouth, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines; its blood is colourless, but it has a true circulation; and it breathes under water, as do fishes.“Having no head,”says Figuier,“the oyster can have no brain; the nerves originate near the mouth, where a great ganglion is visible, whence issue a pair of nerves which distribute themselves in the regions of the stomach and liver, terminating in a second ganglion, situated behind the liver. The first nervous branch distributes its sensibility to the mouth and tentacles; the second, to the respiratory branchiæ. With organs of the senses oysters are unprovided. Condemned to a sedentary life, riveted to a rock, where they have been rooted, as it were, in their infancy, they neither see nor hear; touch appears to be their only sense, and that is placed in the labial tentacles of the mouth.”The oyster may carry hundreds of thousands of eggs—some say as many as 2,000,000; it ejects them after a process of incubation. Nothing is more curious than to witness a bank of oysters in the spawning season, which is usually from the month of June to the end of Septem[pg 131]ber.35Every adult—for the oyster is sexless—throws forth a living dust, a perfect cloud of embryotic life. The spat is soon scattered far and wide, and unless the young oyster attach itself to some solid body, it falls a victim to other marine animals. Microscopic in size when it leaves the parent, it is at the end of a month about the size of a large pea; in a year it may be an inch and a half in diameter; in three it is getting on to a quite respectable size, and after a short course in the oyster park it is ready for the table.36Oysters are of all sizes, and there are some so large that they require to be carved. In New York, the paradise of oyster-eaters, they range from the size of a half-crown to five or six inches long. The shores of Long Island, a distance round of 115 miles, are one continuous oyster-field, while the one State of Virginia is said to possess nearly 2,000,000 acres of oyster-beds. The Americans are great lovers of the bivalve, which is probably one of the most wholesome forms ofeasynourishment which can possibly be taken. In a stew with milk, and a little oatmeal, or as soup, they are especially good for invalids, and when one can take nothing else, he can usually relish oysters. And, as all gastronomers know, they rather increase than diminish appetite; hence the modern French practice of taking half a dozenbeforethe soup is served.“There is no alimentary substance,”says a French writer,“not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances; but oysters never.... We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always and in profusion, without fear of indigestion.”The few who cannot eat them, and therearesuch, are really to be commiserated. How highly they are esteemed in some countries is shown by the fact that some years ago they cost in St. Petersburg a paper rouble, or about a shillingeach; in Stockholm, fivepence each. In England only two or three years ago they had risen to nearly four-fifths of the latter price; but now, thanks to the extensive cultivation, and to the importation of excellent American oysters on a large scale, they are within the reach of all.Of the quantity of oysters consumed in London alone who can give even an approximate guess? Fancy, if you can, also, that curiously courteous exchange which goes on every Christmas between our oyster-eating country cousins and our turkey and goose loving Londoners. The turkey, the brace of pheasants or hares, has arrived.“Such a present,”says the author of“The Oyster,”“is promptly repaid by a fine cod packed in ice, and two barrels of oysters. How sweet are these when eaten at a country home, and opened by yourselves, the barrel being paraded on the table with its head knocked out, and with the whitest of napkins round it. * * * How sweet it is, too, to open some of the dear natives for your pretty cousin, and to see her open her sweet little mouth about as wide as Lesbia’s sparrow did for his lump of—not sugar, it was not then invented—but lump of honey! How sweet it is, after the young lady has swallowed her half-dozen, to help yourself! The oyster never tastes sweeter[pg 132]than when thus operated on by yourself, so that you do not‘job’the knife into your hand!”The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters, but then they regarded Britain much as we now do Greenland. The Romans, however, highly appreciated them. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, have all enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster; and it was to Sergius Orata that we owe the introduction of oyster-beds, for he it was that invented the layers or stews for oysters at Baia.“That was in the days when luxury was rampant, and when men of great wealth, like Licinius Crassus, the leviathan slave-merchant, rose to the highest honours; for this dealer in human flesh in the boasted land of liberty served the office of consul along with Pompey the Great, and on one occasion required no less than 10,000 tables to accommodate all his guests. How many barrels of oysters were eaten at that celebrated dinner, the‘Ephemerides’—as Plutarch callsThe TimesandMorning Postof that day—have omitted to state; but as oysters then took the place that turtle soup now does at our great City feeds, imagination may busy itself as it likes with the calculation. All we know is, that oysters then fetched very long prices at Rome, as the author of the‘Tabella Ciberia’has not failed to tell us; and then, as now, the high price of any luxury of the table was sure to make a liberal supply of it necessary when a man like Crassus entertained half the city as his guests, to rivet his popularity.“But the Romans had a weakness for the‘breedy creatures’as our dear old friend Christopher North calls them in his inimitable‘Noctes.’In the time of Nero, some sixty years later, the consumption of oysters in the‘Imperial City’was nearly as great as it now is in the‘World’s Metropolis;’and there is a statement, which I remember to have read somewhere, that during the reign of Domitian, the last of the twelve Cæsars, a greater number of millions of bushels were annually consumed at Rome than I should care to swear to. These oysters, however, were but Mediterranean produce—the small fry of Circe, and the smaller Lucrinians; and this unreasonable demand upon them quite[pg 133]exhausted the beds in that great fly-catcher’s reign; and it was not till under the wise administration of Agricola in Britain, when the Romans got their far-famed Rutupians from the shores of Kent, from Richborough, and the Reculvers—theRutupi Portusof the‘Itinerary’of which the latter, the Regulbium, near Whitstable, in the mouth of the Thames, was the northern boundary–thatJuvenal praised them as he does; and he was right; for in the whole world there are no oysters like them; and of all the‘breedy creatures’that glide, or have ever glided, down the throats of the human race, our‘natives’are probably the most delectable.”The Roman emperors later on never failed to have British oysters at their banquets.Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the gourmet who at the firstbite37was able to tell whence the particular breed came.“When I but see the oyster’s shell,I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mudWhere it was raised.”The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater, can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and Colchester“natives,”Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords and“Powldoodies of Burran.”OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months;B, five or six months;C, three or four months;D, one to two months; andE, twenty days after birth.“There is one little spot,”says the author of the entertaining but veracious little work quoted before,“on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river,[pg 134]a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the‘oldest inhabitant,’rented certain oyster-beds, famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians,‘a long time ago,’had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing-smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster-dredger think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores ofulva latissimaandenteromorpha, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for re-shipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by the next morning it would be wise to re-ship his oysters before turning in for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce-looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling-pieces, evidently anticipating the Cornishman’s intention, and determined to frustrate it at all hazards.“‘Whatdo you want here?’he asked of Tyacke.“‘Theoysters I put down to feed,’was the reply;‘they were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to re-ship them, to be in time for to-morrow’s market.’“‘True,’replied the Kentishman,‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about re-shipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do.’“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the‘Beggars’ Opera’put it into verse.”It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—“The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackerel loves the wind,But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,For he comes of a gentle kind.”Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to“an oyster crossed in love.”[pg 135]Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first station in his destined travels in company with his kind, and if it occupies a long time, is attentively supplied with refreshing sea-water. If taken proper care of, he arrives at the wharf as lively as when first taken from his native element. Witness the excellent American“Blue Points,”now commonly sold in England. Arrived in port, the oyster too often, however, first becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery, for here he is shovelled into carts and barrows, and tumbled into sacks, and he may consider himself greatly fortunate if he gets a drink of salted, not sea, water.An old adage tells us that“He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.”Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made.“Once upon a time a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and listening to the murmur of the‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would say, of‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged‘native’for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult, snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth.‘Delightful!’he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes;‘what is this?’and again he sucked his finger. Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the mollusc itself.‘Delicious!’he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we now take it, of‘foaming brown stout’or‘pale Chablis’to wash it down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless man indulge in the first oyster-banquet!”38The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must take themau naturel. In Wilson’s“Noctes Ambrosianæ”we find the following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’ vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the eatin’ of eisters.”Oyster-fishing is pursued in many different ways in different countries. Round Minorca, divers descend, hammer in hand, and bring up as many as they can carry. On the English[pg 136]and French coasts a most destructive process is employed; a dredge-net, heavily weighted with an iron frame, is thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from the bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud.“In France,”says Figuier,“oyster-dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats, each carrying four or five men. At a fixed hour, and under the surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the national flag, the flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark is provided with four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common clasp purse. These dredges are formed of network, with a strong iron frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of acting as a scraper and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels over the oyster-beds.... The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling in, and very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge—seaweeds, star-fishes, lobsters, crabs, actinia, and stones. In this manner the common oyster-beds on both sides of the Channel were ploughed up by the oyster-dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up a field.”The consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly successful in a commercial point of view.In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the Acheron of so many of the classical poets—is a great oyster-park, dating from the days of the Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, shaded by magnificent trees; its greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet; its bottom is black, the mud being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster cultivation there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of Lake Fusaro warehouse, as it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon the bottom of the lake, and all around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and artificial rockeries, surrounded by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one to the other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and twigs. In the spawning season the young fry, issuing from the parents on the stones or rocks, are arrested by these means. They have, as it were, a resting-place provided for them on the piles and faggots.The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded on his study of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that of twenty-three oyster-beds which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, the Isles of Ré and Oleron, only five were left, and that at other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful statement must be made.“The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime populations are now actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster-parks, in imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. In his appeal to the Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration of Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for sowing the whole French coast in such a manner as to re-establish the oyster-banks now in ruins, extend those which were prosperous, and create others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would permit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year in which his report was received operations commenced by planting 3,000,000 mother-oysters which had[pg 137]been dredged in the common ground; brood from the oyster-grounds at Cancale and Tréquiers being distributed in ten longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of shells. At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested, and the dredge in a few minutes brought up 2,000 oysters fit for the table, while two fascines, drawn up at random, contained nearly 20,000, from one to two inches in diameter.”The publicity given to these facts excited great and practical interest, and in a short time the culture assumed gigantic proportions. The Bay of Arcachon was transformed into a vast field of production, no less than 1,200 capitalists, mostly very small ones, associated with an equal number of fishermen, having up to 1870 planted no less than 988 acres of oysters. In this way the State organised two model farms for experimental purposes, at the trifling original cost of £114; it was estimated to be worth £8,000 in 1870, and had 5,000,000 oysters, large and small. 1,200 parks were then in active operations on the Isle of Ré, and 2,000 more in course of construction.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.In our own country the Whitstable Company has been most successful.“The layings at Whitstable,”Mr. Bertram tells us,“occupy about a mile and a half square, and the oyster-beds have been so prosperous as to have obtained the name of the‘happy fishing grounds.’[pg 138]Whitstable lies in a sandy bay formed by a small branch of the Medway, which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland. Throughout this bay, from the town of Whitstable at its eastern extremity to the old town of Faversham, which lies several miles inland, the whole of the estuary is occupied by oyster-farms, on which the maritime population, to the extent of 3,000 people and upwards, is occupied, the sum paid for labour by the various companies being set down at £160,000 per annum, besides the employment given at Whitstable in building and repairing boats, dredges, and other requisites for the oyster-fishing. The business of the various companies is to feed oysters for the London and other markets, to protect the spawn or flotsam, as the dredgers call it, which is emitted on their own beds, and to furnish, by purchase or otherwise, the new brood necessary to supply the beds which have been taken up for consumption.”The little Bay of Pont, on the Essex coast, a piece of water sixteen miles long by three wide, now gives employment to 150 or more boats, the crews of which are exclusively employed in obtaining brood oysters from eighteen months to two years old to supply the oyster farmers.The Thames, or“native”system, is as follows:—Every year there is a regular examination of the beds, which are so carefully dredged that almost every individual oyster is examined. The younger ones are placed where they can thrive best, the same being true of all grades. Dead and sickly oysters are removed, and star-fish and all kinds of enemies killed.THE SCALLOP (Pecten).THE SCALLOP (Pecten).The Scallop (Pecten) is not a true oyster, though it may be cooked and treated like one, with satisfactory results. Its name is derived from the channeled edges and surfaces peculiar to it, which somewhat resemble the arrangements of the teeth of a comb. Centuries ago they were known as Pilgrims’ Shells; for in the middle ages the pilgrims were wont to ornament their habits or hats with these bivalves, of which there are not far from a couple of hundred known species. They are much more lively animals than the oyster, being able to shift about from place to place with some degree of agility; this they do by forcibly ejecting water between their shells, moving on by a kind of recoil. Another curious bivalve mollusc is theSpondylus, a genus found mostly in the warmer seas, some of the species of which are highly prized by conchologists. Their strong, brilliantly-coloured shells bristle with spines and feet. One of the most remarkable species is that known to naturalists asSpondylus regius, at all times scarce, and at one time extremely rare. In connection with the last-named mollusc, a story is told by M. Chenu, regarding an enthusiastic collector.“M. R——,”says Chenu,“was Professor of Botany to the Faculty of Paris, and was, as sometimes happens, more learned than rich; he wished, on the invitation of a stranger, to purchase one of these shells at a very high price, which might be from 3,000 to 6,000 francs (approximately £120 to £240); the bargain was made, and the price agreed upon; it was only necessary to pay. The money in the Professor’s hands made only a part of the sum the merchant was to receive for his shell, and he would not part with it without payment. M. R——, now consulting his desire to possess the shell more than his weak resources, made up secretly a parcel of his scanty plate, and went out to sell it. Without consulting his wife, he replaced his silver plate by articles of tin, and ran to the merchant to secure his coveted Spondylus, which he believed to beS. regius.[pg 139]SPONDYLUS.SPONDYLUS.“The hour of dinner arrived, and we may imagine the astonishment of Madame R——, who could not comprehend the strange metamorphosis of her plate. She delivered herself of a thousand painful conjectures on the subject. M. R——, on his part, returned home happy with his shell, which he had committed to the safe custody of a box placed in his coat pocket. But as he approached the house he paused, and began for the first time to think of the reception he might meet with. The reproaches which awaited him, however, were compensated when he thought of the treasure he carried home. Finally, he reached home, and Madame R——’s wrath was worthy of the occasion; the poor man was overwhelmed with the grief he had caused his wife; his courage altogether forsook him. He forgot his shell, and in his trepidation, seated himself on a chair without the necessary adjustment of his garment. He was only reminded of his treasure by hearing the crushing sound of the breaking box which contained it. Fortunately the damage done was not very great—two spines only of the shell were broken; but the good man’s grief made so great an impression on Madame R——, that she no longer thought of her own loss, but directed all her efforts to console the simple-minded philosopher.”It may be added that these curious bivalve molluscs are very commonly associated with branches of coral, to which they adhere firmly.

The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful Sea-anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star-fish—Sea Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship-worm—Their Ravages on the Holland Coast—The Retiring Razor-fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman Estimation of them—The“Breedy Creatures”brought from Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System pursued.

The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful Sea-anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star-fish—Sea Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship-worm—Their Ravages on the Holland Coast—The Retiring Razor-fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman Estimation of them—The“Breedy Creatures”brought from Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System pursued.

Among the interesting and comparatively familiar forms of ocean’s treasures must be counted the Madrepores, often regarded as corals, but quite distinct as a scientific group from the precious coral of commerce. The Madreporidæ are very numerous, and are formed by colonies of polyps. The poet has truly described them:—

“I saw the living pile ascendThe mausoleum of its architects,Still dying upward as their labour closed:Slime the material, but the slime was turnedTo adamant by their petrific touch.”

“I saw the living pile ascend

The mausoleum of its architects,

Still dying upward as their labour closed:

Slime the material, but the slime was turned

To adamant by their petrific touch.”

The polyps of the madrepores resemble flowers when their upper disc is expanded and their feelers are out in the water. When contracted, they are concealed from sight in the calcareous cells, which have grown with themselves, and form part of the madrepora. These beautiful and curious natural productions assume many distinct forms. Some of them are arborescent, as inStylaster flabelliformis, which puts forth a perfect forest of trunks and branches. Others are star-like in shape; many are more or less cylindrical and oval, as in the well-known“Brain coral”(Meandrina cerebriformis). Another genus is entitledFungia, from a supposed resemblance to the mushroom, there being this difference between terrestrial and marine mushrooms—that the former have leaflets below, and the latter have them above. One of the most pleasing forms is found in the Plantain Madrepore, where the polyps are arranged in tufts.

MADREPORES.MADREPORES.

MADREPORES.

The Sea-anemones (Actinidæ) will be now, thanks to the popularity of the aquarium, tolerably familiar to most readers. Although undoubtedly animal, they much more resemble flowers. They are to be found of the most brilliant colours and graceful forms.

The body of the Sea-anemone is“cylindrical in form, terminating beneath in a muscular disc, which is generally large and distinct, enabling them to cling vigorously to foreign bodies. It terminates above in an upper disc, bearing many rows of tentacles, which differ from each other only in their size. These tentacles are sometimes decorated with brilliant colours, forming a species of collar, consisting of contractile and sometimes retractile tubes, pierced at their points with an orifice, whence issue jets of water, which are ejected at the will of the animal. Arranged in circles, they are distributed with perfect regularity round a central mouth. These are their arms.”The stomach of the sea-anemone is both the seat of digestion and of reproduction. The young are actually ejected from the mouth with the rejecta of their food.“The daisy-like anemones in the Zoological Gardens of Paris,”Frédol tells us,“frequently throw up young ones, which are dispersed, and attach themselves to various parts of the aquarium, and finally become miniature anemones exactly like the parent. An actinia, which had taken a very copious repast, ejected a portion of it about twenty-four hours later, and in the middle of the ejected food were found thirty-eight young individuals.”According to one author, an accouchement is here a fit of indigestion! Sea-anemones may be mutilated, cut limb from limb, or torn to pieces, and each piece will become a new anemone in the end.“They adhere,”says Dr. Johnson,“to rocks, shells, and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous secretion from their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and remove to another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen ofActinia crassicornisthat might have been originally two inches in diameter,[pg 124]which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve ofPecten maximusof the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was, of course, prevented; yet, instead of emaciating and dying of atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions.”The Actinia are at once gluttonous and voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are literally killed by contact with them.

In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the Green Actinia being in special repute.

SEA-ANEMONES.SEA-ANEMONES.1.Actinoloba dianthus. 2.Cereus gemmaceus. 3.Actinia bicolor. 4.Sagartia viduata. 5.Cereus papillossus. 6.Actinia picta. 7.Actinia equina. 8.Sagartia rosea. 9.Sagartia coccinea.

SEA-ANEMONES.1.Actinoloba dianthus. 2.Cereus gemmaceus. 3.Actinia bicolor. 4.Sagartia viduata. 5.Cereus papillossus. 6.Actinia picta. 7.Actinia equina. 8.Sagartia rosea. 9.Sagartia coccinea.

The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and cretaceous. It is animated with life.

A vast natural group is that of theEchinodermata, which includes five orders, or[pg 125]families, embracing among them the star-fish, the sea-eggs, or sea-urchins, and the sea-cucumbers, or“sea-slugs”(Holothurias), the latter of which are important items in the food of many Asiatics. The generic term Echinodermata signifies an animal bristling with spines, but the group includes many to whom it could not be applied.

The Star-fish (Asterias) is met in almost every sea, and in all latitudes, although more richly varied in tropical seas. They vary in colour from a yellowish-grey to orange, red, or violet. The body of the asterias is a most curious organisation, having sometimes as many as 11,000 juxta-imposed pieces, while it possesses spines and tubercles. Observe one stranded on the shore, and it may appear destitute of locomotive powers. But this is not so, for they can slowly creep over small spaces, and even up the vertical sides of rocks. Frédol says:—“If an asterias is turned upon its back, it will at first remain immovable, with its feet shut up. Soon, however, out come the feet like so many little feelers; it moves them backward and forward, as if feeling for the ground; it soon inclines them towards the bottom of the vase, and fixes them one after the other. When it has a sufficient number attached, the animal turns itself round. It is not impossible, whilst walking[pg 126]on the sea-shore, to have the pleasure of seeing one of these star-fishes walking upon the sand,”although they are very commonly left dead there.

The star-fish’s mouth is on its lower side, and almost directly abuts on its stomach. It is a voracious feeder, and will even attack molluscs. Formerly it was believed that the animal would open an oyster with one of its rays, or legs, but this was unlikely, as the oyster might be likely enough to have the best of it in such a case by shutting his shells on the intruder. It is now pretty well understood that it injects an acrid poison into the oyster’s shell, which obliges it to open.

STAR-FISH.STAR-FISH.

STAR-FISH.

The“Urchins”seem to owe their name to Aristotle, and their spiny covering and armature have in all ages attracted the attention of naturalists. Some of them have 3,000 or 4,000 prickles, and their organisation is really wonderful. They are enclosed in a globular hollow box, which grows with their growth. Gosse explains how. The box can never be cast off, and it is obvious that the deposits made from inside would only narrow the space, which really requires to be enlarged.“The growing animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food. Its cry is‘Give me space! a larger house, or I die!’How is this problem solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of the Creator has a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made in one piece, nor in ten, nor a hundred. Six hundred distinct pieces go to make up the hollow case, all accurately fitted together, so that the perfect symmetry of outline remains unbroken; and yet, thin as their substance is, they retain their relative positions with unchanging exactness, and the slight brittle box retains all requisite strength and firmness, for each of these pieces is enveloped by a layer of living flesh; a vascular tissue passes up between the joints, where one meets another, and spreads itself over the whole exterior surface.”Their spines are instruments of defence and of locomotion; each has several muscles to work it.

The poet-scientist, Michelet, has beautifully painted the animal’s nature, and makes it describe itself as follows.“I am born,”says the unobtrusive Echinoderm,“without ambition; I ask for none of the brilliant gifts possessed by those gentlemen the molluscs. I would neither make mother-of-pearl nor pearls; I have no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which would point me out; still less do I desire the grace of your giddy medusas, the waving charm of whose flaming locks attracts observation and exposes one to shipwreck. Oh, mother! I wish for one thing only,to be—to be without these exterior and compromising appendages; to be thickset, strong, and round, for that is the shape in which I should be the least exposed; in short, to be a centralised being. I have very little instinct for travel. To roll sometimes from the surface to the bottom of the sea is enough of travel for me. Glued firmly to my rock, I could there solve the problem, the solution of which your favourite, man, seeks for in vain—that of safety. To strictly exclude enemies and admit all friends, especially water, air, and light, would, I know, cost me some labour and constant effort. Covered with movable spines, enemies will avoid me. Now, bristling like a bear, they call me an urchin.”34

URCHINS IN A ROCK.URCHINS IN A ROCK.

URCHINS IN A ROCK.

The term“sea-cucumber”accurately describes the shape of the Holothuria, which is in general terms a worm-like cylinder, varying as much as from an inch or two to[pg 127]thirty, and, in exceptional cases, forty inches in length. The skin of the animal is usually thick and leathery; it is crowned by a mouth with a fringe of tentacula, which expand like a flower when it is unmolested. They particularly avoid the glare of light. One large eatable species is common in the Mediterranean, and is used for food in Naples and elsewhere. But it is in the Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seas that theHolothuria edulis, known there as thetrepang, is an important adjunct to the food of the natives. Thousands of junks are employed in the trepang fisheries. The Malay fisherman will harpoon them with a long bamboo terminating in a sharp hook at a distance of thirty yards. In four or five fathoms of water native divers are employed, who seize them in their hands, and will bring up several at a time. They are then boiled, and flattened with stones; after which process they are spread out on bamboo mats to dry, first in the sun and afterwards by smoking. They are then put in sacks and shipped principally to Chinese ports, where they are considered a luxury.

The great French navigator, Dumont d’Urville, witnessed the processes employed while in Raffles Bay. An hour after the arrival of four prows all the men were at work ashore cooking them in boilers placed over roughly-constructed stone furnaces, after which they were dried on hurdled roofs. Captain d’Urville went on board one of the Malay vessels, where he was received with cordiality by the padrone, or captain.“He,”says that navigator,“showed us over his little ship. The keel appeared to us sufficiently solid; even the lines did not want elegance; but great disorder seemed to reign in the stowage department. From a kind of bridge, formed by hurdles of bamboos and junk, we saw the cabin, which looked like a poultry house: bags of rice, packets and boxes were huddled together. Below was the store of water, of cured trepang, and the sailors’ berths. Each boat was furnished with two rudders, one at each end, which lifted itself when the boat touched the bottom. The craft was furnished with two masts, without shrouds, which could be lowered on to the bridge at will by means of a hinge; they carry the ordinary sail; the anchors are of wood, for iron is rarely used by the Malays; their cables are made of rattan fibre; the crew of each bark consists of about thirty-seven, each shore boat having a crew of six men. At the moment of our visit they were all occupied in fishing operations, some of them being anchored very near to us. Seven or eight of their number, nearly naked, were diving for trepang; the padrone alone was unoccupied. An ardent sun darted its rays upon their heads without appearing to incommode them, an exposure which no European could hold up under. It was near mid-day, and the moment, as our Malay captain assured us, most favourable for the fishing. In fact, we saw that each diver returned to the surface with at least one animal, and sometimes two, in his hands. It appears that the higher the sun is above the horizon, the more easily is the creature distinguished at the bottom. The divers were so rapid in their movements that they scarcely touched the boat, into which they threw the animals before they dived again. When the boat was filled with them, it proceeded to the shore, and its place was supplied by an empty one.”The Holothuria taken there were five to six inches long. D’Urville tasted it when prepared, and says that it resembled lobster. His men, however, took more kindly to it than did he.

SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).

SEA-CUCUMBER (Holothuria tubulosa).

We must now examine a most important class of pulpy animals, the Mollusca,[pg 128]of which the bivalve molluscs are by far the most important to man. In consequence of their very softness and delicacy, Nature has provided them with a shell coat of calcareous mail.

The sub-classAcephala, are as their names indicate,headlessmolluscs, and though sometimespartiallynaked, are usually very well protected by shells. When it is known that there are over 4,000 species of bivalve molluscs, the impossibility of describing more than a few typical and prominent examples will be seen.

The genusTeredoconsists of marine worm-like animals having a special and irresistible inclination for boring wood, whatever its hardness. Ships have been thus silently and secretly undermined, till the planks have been either like sponges or have crumbled into dust under the very feet of their crews. The holes bored by these imperceptible miners riddle the entire interior of a piece of wood, without any external indication of their ravages. Piles and piers have been utterly ruined, and vessels have sometimes gone to the bottom through them. At the beginning of the last century half the coast of Holland was threatened with inundation and practical annihilation because the piles which support its dykes were attacked by the teredo, and hundreds of thousands of pounds damage was done by this wretched worm. It has been now discovered that the worm has a great antipathy to oxide of iron, and wood impregnated with it is secure from its ravages. Other animals of the same group are capable of boring even rock.

Another important bivalve is the well known Solen or“razor-fish,”varieties of which are common all over the globe.“These molluscs,”says Figuier,“live with their shells buried vertically in the sand, a short distance from the shore; the hole which they have hollowed, and which they never quit, sometimes attains as much as two yards in depth; by means of their foot, which is large, conical, swollen in the middle and pointed at its extremity, they raise themselves with great agility to the entrance of their burrow. They bury themselves rapidly, and disappear on the slightest approach of danger.

“When the sea retires, the presence of the Solen is indicated by a small orifice in the[pg 129]sand, whence escape at intervals bubbles of air. In order to attract them to the surface, the fishermen throw into the hole a pinch of salt; the sand immediately becomes stirred, and the animal presents itself just above the point of its shell. It must be seized at once, for it disappears again very quickly, and no renewed efforts will bring it to the surface a second time. Its retreat is commonly cut short by a knife being passed below it; for it burrows into the ground with such velocity that it is difficult to capture it with the hand alone. The fish itself is a kind of marine worm.”

THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).

THE RAZOR FISH (Solen ensis).

But of the Acephalous Mollusca none are more important to man than the mussel and oyster, the pearl-bearing varieties of which latter have been already considered. Both are familiar to every reader.

TheMytilus edulis, the edible mussel of commerce, the“poor man’s oyster,”is provided with a byssus, a bundle of hairs or threads, by which it can anchor to the rock. In its natural state it is much less fitted for human food than when cultivated. Their civilisation, as it might be termed, dates back to the year 1236, when the master of a barque, an Irishman named Walton, was wrecked in the bay or creek of Aiguillon, a few miles distant from Rochelle. The exile at first supported himself by hunting sea-fowl in the neighbouring marshes, where he also soon began, being an observant man, to notice certain peculiarities of mussel life.

THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).

THE MUSSEL (Mytilus edulis).

Walton remarked that many of the mussels attached themselves by preference to that part of posts or stones a littleabovethe mud of the marshes, and that those so situated soon became plumper and fatter, and more suitable for edible purposes, than those buriedinthe mud. He soon saw the possibilities of a new branch of industry.“The practices he introduced,”wrote a distinguished French writer, long ago,“were so happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created for a numerous population is governed.”He placed long rows of twelve-foot posts, about six feet high out of the watery mud, and a yard apart, each pair of which always formed a letter V; in other words, a number of them radiated from a common centre. The posts were interlaced with a basket-work of branches, so as to form continuous hurdles; these are now termedbouchots. He also had isolated posts, and one of his great ideas was, as in oyster culture to-day, to arrest the spat, which[pg 130]would otherwise have washed away to sea with the tide, and been lost.“At the present time these lines of hurdles form a perfect little forest at Aiguillon; there are about a quarter of a million piles alone. In July thebouchotiers, as the men employed in this culture are termed, launch their punts, and proceeding to the marshes, detach with a hook the thickly agglomerated masses of young mussels from the piles, which they gather in baskets and take to the bouchots, which form a perfect hedge of fascines and branches, of different heights. Each stage receives the mollusc suitable to it. In the first stage of its existence the mussel cannot endure exposure to the air, and remains constantly under water, except at the period of spring tides. These are gathered in sacks made of old matting, or suspended in interstices of the basket-work. The mussels are advanced stage after stage until they reach the highest bouchots, which remain out of water at all tides.”The whole bay yielded close on half a million pounds sterling some years ago.

“While,”says Figuier,“commending the mussel as an important article of food, we must not conceal the fact that it has produced in certain persons very grave effects, showing that for them its flesh has the effects of poison. The symptoms, commonly observed two or three hours after the repast, are weakness or torpor, constriction of the throat and swelling of the head, accompanied by great thirst, nausea, frequent vomitings, and eruptions of the skin and severe itching.

“The cause of these attacks is not very well ascertained; they have in turn been ascribed to the presence of the coppery pyrites in the neighbourhood of the mussel; to certain small crabs which lodge themselves as parasites in the shell of the mussel; to the spawn of star-fish or medusæ that the mussel may have swallowed. But, probably the true cause of this kind of poisoning is found in the predisposition of individuals. The remedy is very simple; an emetic, accompanied by drinking plentifully of slightly acidulated beverage.”They are eaten very freely in most parts of the seaboard of the United States, and the present writer has eaten them constantly, boiled, stewed with tomatoes, &c., and in soup, without the slightest bad effects.

ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.

ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.

Thebivalvepar excellencemust always beOstrea edulis, the common oyster. This mollusc, which some might be inclined to place low in the scale of nature, has really a complex and delicate organisation. It has a mouth, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines; its blood is colourless, but it has a true circulation; and it breathes under water, as do fishes.“Having no head,”says Figuier,“the oyster can have no brain; the nerves originate near the mouth, where a great ganglion is visible, whence issue a pair of nerves which distribute themselves in the regions of the stomach and liver, terminating in a second ganglion, situated behind the liver. The first nervous branch distributes its sensibility to the mouth and tentacles; the second, to the respiratory branchiæ. With organs of the senses oysters are unprovided. Condemned to a sedentary life, riveted to a rock, where they have been rooted, as it were, in their infancy, they neither see nor hear; touch appears to be their only sense, and that is placed in the labial tentacles of the mouth.”The oyster may carry hundreds of thousands of eggs—some say as many as 2,000,000; it ejects them after a process of incubation. Nothing is more curious than to witness a bank of oysters in the spawning season, which is usually from the month of June to the end of Septem[pg 131]ber.35Every adult—for the oyster is sexless—throws forth a living dust, a perfect cloud of embryotic life. The spat is soon scattered far and wide, and unless the young oyster attach itself to some solid body, it falls a victim to other marine animals. Microscopic in size when it leaves the parent, it is at the end of a month about the size of a large pea; in a year it may be an inch and a half in diameter; in three it is getting on to a quite respectable size, and after a short course in the oyster park it is ready for the table.36

Oysters are of all sizes, and there are some so large that they require to be carved. In New York, the paradise of oyster-eaters, they range from the size of a half-crown to five or six inches long. The shores of Long Island, a distance round of 115 miles, are one continuous oyster-field, while the one State of Virginia is said to possess nearly 2,000,000 acres of oyster-beds. The Americans are great lovers of the bivalve, which is probably one of the most wholesome forms ofeasynourishment which can possibly be taken. In a stew with milk, and a little oatmeal, or as soup, they are especially good for invalids, and when one can take nothing else, he can usually relish oysters. And, as all gastronomers know, they rather increase than diminish appetite; hence the modern French practice of taking half a dozenbeforethe soup is served.“There is no alimentary substance,”says a French writer,“not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances; but oysters never.... We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always and in profusion, without fear of indigestion.”The few who cannot eat them, and therearesuch, are really to be commiserated. How highly they are esteemed in some countries is shown by the fact that some years ago they cost in St. Petersburg a paper rouble, or about a shillingeach; in Stockholm, fivepence each. In England only two or three years ago they had risen to nearly four-fifths of the latter price; but now, thanks to the extensive cultivation, and to the importation of excellent American oysters on a large scale, they are within the reach of all.

Of the quantity of oysters consumed in London alone who can give even an approximate guess? Fancy, if you can, also, that curiously courteous exchange which goes on every Christmas between our oyster-eating country cousins and our turkey and goose loving Londoners. The turkey, the brace of pheasants or hares, has arrived.“Such a present,”says the author of“The Oyster,”“is promptly repaid by a fine cod packed in ice, and two barrels of oysters. How sweet are these when eaten at a country home, and opened by yourselves, the barrel being paraded on the table with its head knocked out, and with the whitest of napkins round it. * * * How sweet it is, too, to open some of the dear natives for your pretty cousin, and to see her open her sweet little mouth about as wide as Lesbia’s sparrow did for his lump of—not sugar, it was not then invented—but lump of honey! How sweet it is, after the young lady has swallowed her half-dozen, to help yourself! The oyster never tastes sweeter[pg 132]than when thus operated on by yourself, so that you do not‘job’the knife into your hand!”

The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters, but then they regarded Britain much as we now do Greenland. The Romans, however, highly appreciated them. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, have all enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster; and it was to Sergius Orata that we owe the introduction of oyster-beds, for he it was that invented the layers or stews for oysters at Baia.“That was in the days when luxury was rampant, and when men of great wealth, like Licinius Crassus, the leviathan slave-merchant, rose to the highest honours; for this dealer in human flesh in the boasted land of liberty served the office of consul along with Pompey the Great, and on one occasion required no less than 10,000 tables to accommodate all his guests. How many barrels of oysters were eaten at that celebrated dinner, the‘Ephemerides’—as Plutarch callsThe TimesandMorning Postof that day—have omitted to state; but as oysters then took the place that turtle soup now does at our great City feeds, imagination may busy itself as it likes with the calculation. All we know is, that oysters then fetched very long prices at Rome, as the author of the‘Tabella Ciberia’has not failed to tell us; and then, as now, the high price of any luxury of the table was sure to make a liberal supply of it necessary when a man like Crassus entertained half the city as his guests, to rivet his popularity.

“But the Romans had a weakness for the‘breedy creatures’as our dear old friend Christopher North calls them in his inimitable‘Noctes.’In the time of Nero, some sixty years later, the consumption of oysters in the‘Imperial City’was nearly as great as it now is in the‘World’s Metropolis;’and there is a statement, which I remember to have read somewhere, that during the reign of Domitian, the last of the twelve Cæsars, a greater number of millions of bushels were annually consumed at Rome than I should care to swear to. These oysters, however, were but Mediterranean produce—the small fry of Circe, and the smaller Lucrinians; and this unreasonable demand upon them quite[pg 133]exhausted the beds in that great fly-catcher’s reign; and it was not till under the wise administration of Agricola in Britain, when the Romans got their far-famed Rutupians from the shores of Kent, from Richborough, and the Reculvers—theRutupi Portusof the‘Itinerary’of which the latter, the Regulbium, near Whitstable, in the mouth of the Thames, was the northern boundary–thatJuvenal praised them as he does; and he was right; for in the whole world there are no oysters like them; and of all the‘breedy creatures’that glide, or have ever glided, down the throats of the human race, our‘natives’are probably the most delectable.”The Roman emperors later on never failed to have British oysters at their banquets.

Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the gourmet who at the firstbite37was able to tell whence the particular breed came.

“When I but see the oyster’s shell,I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mudWhere it was raised.”

“When I but see the oyster’s shell,

I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mud

Where it was raised.”

The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater, can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and Colchester“natives,”Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords and“Powldoodies of Burran.”

OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months;B, five or six months;C, three or four months;D, one to two months; andE, twenty days after birth.

OYSTERS (Ostrea edulis).A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months;B, five or six months;C, three or four months;D, one to two months; andE, twenty days after birth.

“There is one little spot,”says the author of the entertaining but veracious little work quoted before,“on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river,[pg 134]a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the‘oldest inhabitant,’rented certain oyster-beds, famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians,‘a long time ago,’had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing-smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster-dredger think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores ofulva latissimaandenteromorpha, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for re-shipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by the next morning it would be wise to re-ship his oysters before turning in for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce-looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling-pieces, evidently anticipating the Cornishman’s intention, and determined to frustrate it at all hazards.

“‘Whatdo you want here?’he asked of Tyacke.

“‘Theoysters I put down to feed,’was the reply;‘they were placed there by your permission, and now I am anxious to re-ship them, to be in time for to-morrow’s market.’

“‘True,’replied the Kentishman,‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters and feed them, but not a word was said about re-shipping them. Where they are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what to do.’

“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the‘Beggars’ Opera’put it into verse.”

It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—

“The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackerel loves the wind,But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,For he comes of a gentle kind.”

“The herring loves the merry moonlight,

The mackerel loves the wind,

But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,

For he comes of a gentle kind.”

Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to“an oyster crossed in love.”

Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first station in his destined travels in company with his kind, and if it occupies a long time, is attentively supplied with refreshing sea-water. If taken proper care of, he arrives at the wharf as lively as when first taken from his native element. Witness the excellent American“Blue Points,”now commonly sold in England. Arrived in port, the oyster too often, however, first becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery, for here he is shovelled into carts and barrows, and tumbled into sacks, and he may consider himself greatly fortunate if he gets a drink of salted, not sea, water.

An old adage tells us that“He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.”Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made.“Once upon a time a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and listening to the murmur of the‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would say, of‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged‘native’for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult, snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth.‘Delightful!’he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes;‘what is this?’and again he sucked his finger. Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the mollusc itself.‘Delicious!’he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we now take it, of‘foaming brown stout’or‘pale Chablis’to wash it down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless man indulge in the first oyster-banquet!”38

The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must take themau naturel. In Wilson’s“Noctes Ambrosianæ”we find the following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’ vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the eatin’ of eisters.”

Oyster-fishing is pursued in many different ways in different countries. Round Minorca, divers descend, hammer in hand, and bring up as many as they can carry. On the English[pg 136]and French coasts a most destructive process is employed; a dredge-net, heavily weighted with an iron frame, is thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from the bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud.“In France,”says Figuier,“oyster-dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats, each carrying four or five men. At a fixed hour, and under the surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the national flag, the flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark is provided with four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common clasp purse. These dredges are formed of network, with a strong iron frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of acting as a scraper and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels over the oyster-beds.... The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling in, and very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge—seaweeds, star-fishes, lobsters, crabs, actinia, and stones. In this manner the common oyster-beds on both sides of the Channel were ploughed up by the oyster-dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up a field.”The consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly successful in a commercial point of view.

In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the Acheron of so many of the classical poets—is a great oyster-park, dating from the days of the Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, shaded by magnificent trees; its greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet; its bottom is black, the mud being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster cultivation there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of Lake Fusaro warehouse, as it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon the bottom of the lake, and all around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and artificial rockeries, surrounded by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one to the other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and twigs. In the spawning season the young fry, issuing from the parents on the stones or rocks, are arrested by these means. They have, as it were, a resting-place provided for them on the piles and faggots.

The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded on his study of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that of twenty-three oyster-beds which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes, Rochefort, the Isles of Ré and Oleron, only five were left, and that at other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful statement must be made.“The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime populations are now actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster-parks, in imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. In his appeal to the Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration of Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for sowing the whole French coast in such a manner as to re-establish the oyster-banks now in ruins, extend those which were prosperous, and create others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would permit. The first serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year in which his report was received operations commenced by planting 3,000,000 mother-oysters which had[pg 137]been dredged in the common ground; brood from the oyster-grounds at Cancale and Tréquiers being distributed in ten longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of shells. At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested, and the dredge in a few minutes brought up 2,000 oysters fit for the table, while two fascines, drawn up at random, contained nearly 20,000, from one to two inches in diameter.”The publicity given to these facts excited great and practical interest, and in a short time the culture assumed gigantic proportions. The Bay of Arcachon was transformed into a vast field of production, no less than 1,200 capitalists, mostly very small ones, associated with an equal number of fishermen, having up to 1870 planted no less than 988 acres of oysters. In this way the State organised two model farms for experimental purposes, at the trifling original cost of £114; it was estimated to be worth £8,000 in 1870, and had 5,000,000 oysters, large and small. 1,200 parks were then in active operations on the Isle of Ré, and 2,000 more in course of construction.

DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.

DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.

In our own country the Whitstable Company has been most successful.“The layings at Whitstable,”Mr. Bertram tells us,“occupy about a mile and a half square, and the oyster-beds have been so prosperous as to have obtained the name of the‘happy fishing grounds.’[pg 138]Whitstable lies in a sandy bay formed by a small branch of the Medway, which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland. Throughout this bay, from the town of Whitstable at its eastern extremity to the old town of Faversham, which lies several miles inland, the whole of the estuary is occupied by oyster-farms, on which the maritime population, to the extent of 3,000 people and upwards, is occupied, the sum paid for labour by the various companies being set down at £160,000 per annum, besides the employment given at Whitstable in building and repairing boats, dredges, and other requisites for the oyster-fishing. The business of the various companies is to feed oysters for the London and other markets, to protect the spawn or flotsam, as the dredgers call it, which is emitted on their own beds, and to furnish, by purchase or otherwise, the new brood necessary to supply the beds which have been taken up for consumption.”The little Bay of Pont, on the Essex coast, a piece of water sixteen miles long by three wide, now gives employment to 150 or more boats, the crews of which are exclusively employed in obtaining brood oysters from eighteen months to two years old to supply the oyster farmers.

The Thames, or“native”system, is as follows:—Every year there is a regular examination of the beds, which are so carefully dredged that almost every individual oyster is examined. The younger ones are placed where they can thrive best, the same being true of all grades. Dead and sickly oysters are removed, and star-fish and all kinds of enemies killed.

THE SCALLOP (Pecten).THE SCALLOP (Pecten).

THE SCALLOP (Pecten).

The Scallop (Pecten) is not a true oyster, though it may be cooked and treated like one, with satisfactory results. Its name is derived from the channeled edges and surfaces peculiar to it, which somewhat resemble the arrangements of the teeth of a comb. Centuries ago they were known as Pilgrims’ Shells; for in the middle ages the pilgrims were wont to ornament their habits or hats with these bivalves, of which there are not far from a couple of hundred known species. They are much more lively animals than the oyster, being able to shift about from place to place with some degree of agility; this they do by forcibly ejecting water between their shells, moving on by a kind of recoil. Another curious bivalve mollusc is theSpondylus, a genus found mostly in the warmer seas, some of the species of which are highly prized by conchologists. Their strong, brilliantly-coloured shells bristle with spines and feet. One of the most remarkable species is that known to naturalists asSpondylus regius, at all times scarce, and at one time extremely rare. In connection with the last-named mollusc, a story is told by M. Chenu, regarding an enthusiastic collector.“M. R——,”says Chenu,“was Professor of Botany to the Faculty of Paris, and was, as sometimes happens, more learned than rich; he wished, on the invitation of a stranger, to purchase one of these shells at a very high price, which might be from 3,000 to 6,000 francs (approximately £120 to £240); the bargain was made, and the price agreed upon; it was only necessary to pay. The money in the Professor’s hands made only a part of the sum the merchant was to receive for his shell, and he would not part with it without payment. M. R——, now consulting his desire to possess the shell more than his weak resources, made up secretly a parcel of his scanty plate, and went out to sell it. Without consulting his wife, he replaced his silver plate by articles of tin, and ran to the merchant to secure his coveted Spondylus, which he believed to beS. regius.

SPONDYLUS.SPONDYLUS.

SPONDYLUS.

“The hour of dinner arrived, and we may imagine the astonishment of Madame R——, who could not comprehend the strange metamorphosis of her plate. She delivered herself of a thousand painful conjectures on the subject. M. R——, on his part, returned home happy with his shell, which he had committed to the safe custody of a box placed in his coat pocket. But as he approached the house he paused, and began for the first time to think of the reception he might meet with. The reproaches which awaited him, however, were compensated when he thought of the treasure he carried home. Finally, he reached home, and Madame R——’s wrath was worthy of the occasion; the poor man was overwhelmed with the grief he had caused his wife; his courage altogether forsook him. He forgot his shell, and in his trepidation, seated himself on a chair without the necessary adjustment of his garment. He was only reminded of his treasure by hearing the crushing sound of the breaking box which contained it. Fortunately the damage done was not very great—two spines only of the shell were broken; but the good man’s grief made so great an impression on Madame R——, that she no longer thought of her own loss, but directed all her efforts to console the simple-minded philosopher.”

It may be added that these curious bivalve molluscs are very commonly associated with branches of coral, to which they adhere firmly.

Back to IndexNext