OYSTERS. 233 
the shore, where their flavour and size are rapidly 
improved. They have been known to augment 
the circumference of their shell even to the extent 
of an inch during the first two months, but in such 
cases the concavity within the valves is shallow.”* 
Almost all the information we yet possess on 
the economy of the Oyster, is derived from Bishop 
Sprat’s “ History of the Royal Society,” and is 
contained in a paper entitled, “ The History of 
the Generation and Ordering of Green Oysters, 
commonly called Colchester Oysters.” It reads 
as follows :— 
‘Tn the month of May the oysters cast their 
spawn (which the dredgers call their spat); it is 
like to a drop of candle, and about the bigness of 
an halfpenny. The spat cleaves to stones, old 
oyster-shells, pieces of wood, and such like things 
at the bottom of the sea, which they call cultch. It 
is probably conjectured that the spat in twenty- 
four hours begins to have a shell. In the month 
of May, the dredgers (by the law of the Admiralty 
Court) have liberty to catch all manner of oysters 
of what size soever. When they have taken them, 
with a knife they gently raise the small brood 
from the cultch, and then they throw the cultch 
in again, to preserve the ground for the future, 
unless they be so newly spat that they cannot be 
safely severed from the cultch; in that case they 
are permitted to take the stone or shell, &c. that 
the spat is upon, one shell having many times 
twenty spats. After the month of May it is felony 
to carry away the cultch, and punishable to take 
any other oysters, unless it be those of size (that 
is to say) aboutthe bigness of a half-crown piece, 
* Penny Cyclop. xvii. 363. 
