OSTREA. 45 



Britain famous as an oyster-store, and continue to give 

 employment to thousands and a delicate and wholesome 

 food to millions. Although Catullus calls the Helles- 

 pont "caeteris ostreosior oris/' his countrymen always 

 gave the preference to our natives. Some interesting 

 statistics of the trade will be found in the ' British 

 Mollusca.' In a later account of this important branch 

 of our commerce it is stated that in London alone about 

 700 millions of oysters are annually consumed, and that 

 in the provinces there is equal voracity and constant 

 crying out for more. The consumption in Paris in 1861 

 reached 132 millions, according to a statistical report 

 of the archostreologer, M. Coste. The preservation of 

 oyster-fisheries has been frequently the subject of legis- 

 lative enactments in this and other countries. A dispute, 

 which threatened at one time to be serious, arose not 

 many years ago between the French and ourselves as to 

 the limits of such fisheries in the English Channel. It 

 shows the weight that these humble mollusks, insulted 

 in proverbs, but sought after with such eagerness, have 

 in the scale of nations. The same jealousy prevailed 

 lately on the other side of the Atlantic. The Governor 

 of Virginia in 1857 was said to have been in a per- 

 petual stew on this account, and to have sent an urgent 

 " message " or appeal to the Legislature for protection, 

 believing that the idea of an oysterless State was much too 

 gloomy for contemplation ! Our Transatlantic cousins 

 boast that their oysters are far superior in flavour to 

 any in the Old World. In the ' Natural History of 

 New York/ published in 1843, it is stated that there 

 were two principal varieties in the then United States — 

 viz. northern and southern — and that connoisseurs pre- 

 tended to distinguish these varieties by the smell alone. 

 The oyster may have played, although unconsciously, a 



