308 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



has sung of the first raw-oyster eater in the well-known 



lines : 



" That man had sure a palate covered o'er 

 With brass or steel that on the rocky shore 

 First broke the oozy oyster's pearly coat, 

 And risked the living morsel down his throat." 



The popular idea with regard to eating raw oysters is 

 that the animal is killed as soon as 



" The damsel's knife the gaping shell commands, 



And the salt liquor streams between her hands." 

 But this is a mistake ; if the oyster is not dead before it is 

 opened, it is undoubtedly swallowed alive. 



King James's haphazard guess relative to the proto- 

 oyster-eater, is taking it from our fastidious point of view 

 concerning food quite correct, and, consistently with my 

 subject, worthy a brief notice. 



To begin with, then, let us ask who and what was he ? 

 We know not. Time has not saved his name from obli- 

 vion ; Tradition has not echoed it ; nor History falsified 

 one for that benefactor to the Human Race, who, had he 

 been a Greek or Roman, would assuredly have received 

 the honour of deification at the hands of his noble fellow- 

 countrymen, for they who could, in gratitude to the geese 

 whose cackling " saved the Eternal Cit} r ," hold those birds 

 sacred for ever after, would certainly have apotheosized 

 our unknown hero. We must conclude, then, that he 



lived ages upon ages since, 



" - - free as Nature first made Man ! 

 Ere the base laws of servitude began, 

 And wild, in woods, the noble Savage ran." 



Upon what grounds do I come to this conclusion ? Upon 

 the revelations of Geology ; and the fact that the kitchen- 

 middens of the prehistoric period, found in Northern 



