ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 39 



Reculvers the Ruiupi Portus of the " Itinerary," of which 

 the Regulbium, near Whitstable, in the mouth of the 

 Thames, was the northern boundary that Juvenal 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. Can we wonder, then, when Macrobius tells 

 us that the Roman pontiffs in the fourth century never 

 failed to have these Rutupians at table, particularly, feeling 

 sure that Constantine the Great, and his mother, the pious 

 Helena, must have carried their British taste with them to 

 Rome at that period, (if) 



Pliny mentions that, according to the historians of 

 Alexander's expedition, oysters were found in the Indian 

 Sea a foot in diameter, and Sir James E. Tennent unex- 

 pectedly attested the correctness of this statement, as at 

 Kottiar, near Trincomalee, enormous specimens of the 

 edible oysters were brought to the rest-house. One shell 

 measured more than eleven inches in length, by half as 

 manv broad. 



j 



But this extraordinary measurement is beaten bv the 



* * 



oysters of Port Lincoln, in South Australia, which are 

 indeed the biggest edible oysters in the world. They are 

 as large as a dinner plate, and the same shape. They are 

 sometimes more than a foot across the shell, and the oyster 

 fits his shell so well that he does not leave much margin. 

 It is a new sensation, when a friend asks you to lunch at 

 Adelaide, to have one oyster set before you fried in butter, 

 or eggs and bread-crumbs. But it is a very pleasant sensa- 

 tion, for the flavour and delicacy of the Port Lincoln 

 mammoths are proverbial in that land of luxuries. 



(g] "The Oyster." 



