OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 367 



last year, for the same quantity, was /^45- This enormous 

 increase, the public will be glad to hear, has reached its 

 culmination, and the turning point having been gained, a 

 very perceptible abatement of the over-charge has com- 

 menced. 



Fifty millions of oysters always lie on the 

 Whitstable beds. The term ' native,' be it understood, 

 properly includes those oysters, and those alone, which are 

 bred in the Thames estuary, their fineness falling off as 

 they advance eastward towards the Naze and the North 

 Foreland ..... For ages the right of oyster-dredg- 

 ing was held under license from the lords of the manor, 

 and the place was described by Leland as already quoted. 



It was not, however, till 1793 that an Act of Parlia- 

 ment was obtained incorporating the Company of Free 

 Fishers and Dredgers of Whitstable, and granting them a 

 common seal. Since that year, the company has regularly 

 held, each July, its water-court, presided over by its 

 steward. Only 'freemen' are allowed on the grounds, 

 and so rigidly is this rule enforced, even to the letter, that, 

 even if Saturday's boisterous gale had not hindered the 

 operations, those visitors who had been bidden as honoured 

 guests of the Dredgers' Company (alluded to in the begin- 

 ning of this article, but omitted in quotation,) would not 

 have been admitted on board any of the boats, except by a 

 special and most extraordinary concession, formally sanc- 

 tioned by all the members. Generations of exclusiveness 

 have naturally led to a state of clannishness, in which a 

 few family-names go a great way in a population of less 

 than 5000 souls. In fact the Ganns, Kemps, and Nicholl- 

 ses, have it pretty much to themselves, other inhabitants of 

 the town being more or less strangers within its gates, 



