INTRODUCTION. 15 



how best it may be eaten, whether in its living and natural 

 state, or having undergone the ordeal of cooking by the 

 skill of a superior artist. 



Certain of general sympathy, I have poured upon it 

 all the learning I possess upon the subject ; all the taste I 

 am capable of embellishing it with, and all my gastrono- 

 mical experience on this delicious mollusc. In every page 

 I have endeavoured (as it were) to chant in an undertone : 



" Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 

 Who never to himself hath said, 

 This is my own, my Native ? ' 



Both to the man of science and to the general reader, 

 I have sought to make these pages, altogether, a pleasant 

 mixture of eating and cooking, and digesting, and zoology, 

 and ancient classics, and modern pleasant supper parties ; 

 I have sought to make the apotheosis of the oyster become 

 almost an epic theme ; and finally (as I have asserted in 

 good faith so) I have sought to prove that, with respect to 

 the oyster, it is good for the unborn child ; good for the 

 child when two years of age ; good for adolescent youth ; 

 good for manhood in its maturity ; and it is not only good, 

 but a strengthener to old age in its inevitable decay. It 

 can make the sick well, render the healthy stouter, prolong 

 the shortening days of senility, and impart an additional 

 charm to youth and beauty. 



In offering, therefore, the Biography of an Oyster, I 

 say with George Wither, when he presented his book to 

 his sovereign : 



" Good Sir ! reject it not, although it bring 

 Appearances of some fantastic thing 

 At first unfolding;" 



while the " caveat" of good Thomas Adams may well be 



