THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 173 



of the province of New York, by its author, who signs himself " B. 

 Ratzer, Siuv'r in His Majestie's 60th American Reg't." It is a map 

 of the city of New York, and it gives the waters of the entire harbor, 

 with their soundings. Its date is 1767. A large tract of water is 

 marked " The Oyster-Banks." In that area of what was then fine 

 native oysters is now the vast patch of " made-land," laid down by the 

 filling in of the city's refuse, by the New Jersey Central Railroad, and 

 which matter is now in litigation. The time was when the entire 

 waters west of the channel, beginning south of Jersey City, and sur- 

 rounding Ellis and Bedloe's Islands and Robbins's Reef, and a little 

 way beyond Constable's Point, up the Kill Von Kull, altogether some 

 six miles in a straight line, was a rich bank of native oysters, and 

 supposed to be inexhaustible. It can hardly be questioned that, 

 when the European settled here, that which is now the eastern coast- 

 line of the United States contained, by several times, more of these 

 edible bivalves than did all the rest of the world. The very shells left 

 inland in many places, by the aboriginal oyster-eaters, make mounds 

 of vast extent, in some instances thirty feet high. At Fernandina, 

 and other places in Florida, they were used as forts in the late war. 

 As to their antiquity, there can be no doubt that oysters were eaten 

 there thousands of years ago. 



Recent ethnological investigations indicate, at least, the strange 

 fact that the people who began those shell-heaps antedated the sup- 

 posed autocthones of the American Indian. Their bones have been 

 discovered, and they show an osteology not known among any of the 

 red-men of to-day, namely, a flattening of the tibia, or shin-bones. 

 The relics of the great mounds have shown the same fact ; and so 

 marked is this, that the name platycnemic, or flat-shinned, is proposed 

 for this ante-historic race. Again, the unpleasant fact is also indi- 

 cated that these same ancient oyster-eaters were cannibals. And 

 those heaps of oyster-shells on the land, in which are mixed relics of 

 the ancient races, extend from Florida to Maine. They are found on 

 islands in Casco Bay. But the oyster is not an inhabitant of these 

 parts to-day. In fact, it is a sort of fossil ; so that some great geo- 

 logical change has taken place on our coast since those times in the 

 long ago. This surely points to a great antiquity of these autocthonic 

 oyster-eating men. And the several facts just enumerated would indi- 

 cate the extraordinary prevalence of this bivalve on our Eastern coast. 

 The most ancient name of Britain is Albion, with evident allusion to 

 its white cliffs. If this truthfully characterized the Druid-Land, it 

 surely would not have been less appropriate, nor less poetical, had 

 the first adventurer named this Occident shore the Oyster-Land. 



So, then, how potent has been the influence of the oyster in the 

 industries, and morals, and convivialities of the ancient and the mod- 

 ern man! 



