HOW TO COOK AND EAT OYSTERS. 279 



AVe eat him with tomatoes, and the salad with potatoes, 

 Nor look him o'er with horror when he follows the coldslaw ; 

 And neither does he fret us if he marches after lettuce 

 And abreast ot cayenne pepper when his majesty is raw. 

 So welcome with September to the knife and glowing ember, 

 Juicy darling of our dainties, dispossessor of the clam ! 

 To the oyster, then, a hoister, with him a royal royster 

 We shall whoop it through the land of heathen jam." 



The Detroit Free Press, Oct. 12, 1889. 



Of all molluscous animals the oyster is commercially 

 the most important, and gastronomically the most deli- 

 cious, (a] It was said of a cold climate, that no fruit 

 ripened in it " except baked apples ;" and Bishop Corbett 

 satirically says, " They never heard of a raw oyster there." 

 The eaters of raw oysters are doubtless beyond all com- 

 parison in the ascendancy. Dr. Kitchener, who states that 

 he wrote his ''Cook's Oracle" with a knife and fork in one 

 hand and a pen in the other, actually devouring all he 

 described, is a fair specimen of them, but he differed from 

 the majority of oyster eaters, in opening for himself the 

 oysters he so highly enjoyed. "The true lover of an 

 oyster," he remarks, " will have some regard to the feelings 

 of his favourite, and will never abandon it to the mercy of 

 a bungling operator ; but will open it himself, and contrive 

 to detach the shell from the fish so dexterously, that the 

 oyster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his 

 lodging, till he feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmand 

 tickling him to death." Perhaps, however, even Dr. 



(a) Dr. J. G. Jeffreys mentions that Redi, in a letter to his friend 

 Megalotti, describes the Teredo as being not only eatable, but excelling 

 all shell-fish, the oyster not excepted, in its exquisite flavour. Nardo 

 also praises it, and wonders why the Venetians, who call it Bisse del 

 leg-no, do not eat it. " British Conchology," vol. 3, p. 159. 



