254. MONOMYARIA.—OSTREAD&. 
or when, the two shells being shut, a fair shilling 
will rattle between them. The places where these 
oysters are chiefly catched are called the Pont- 
Burnham, Malden, and Colnewaters. * * * This 
brood, and other oysters, they carry to creeks of 
the sea at Brickel-sea, Mersey, Langro, Fringrego, 
Wivenho, olesbury, and Saltcoase, and there 
throw them into the channel, which they call their 
beds or layers, where they grow and fatten, and 
in two or three years the smallest brood will be 
oysters of the size aforesaid. Those oysters which 
they would have green, they put into pits about 
three feet deep in the salt-marshes, which are 
overflowed only at spring-tides, to which they 
have sluices, and let out the sea-water until it is 
about a foot and a half deep. These pits, from 
some quality in the soil co-operating with the heat 
of the sun,* will become green, and communicate 
their colour to the oysters that are put into them 
in four or five days, though they commonly let 
them continue there six weeks or two months, in 
which time they will be of a dark green. ... 
“The oysters, when the tide comes in, lie with 
their hollow shell downwards; and when it goes 
out they turn on the other side. They remove not 
from their places unless in cold weather, to cover 
themselves in the ooze. The reason of the scarcity 
of oysters, and, consequently, of the dearness, is 
because they are of late years bought up by the 
Dutch. There are great penalties by the Admi- 
ralty Court laid upon those that fish out of those 
grounds which the court appoints, or that destroy 
the cultch, or that take any oysters that are not of 
* Rather from the abundant increase in such pits of the 
green Infusoria and Desmidec, on which the Oyster feeds. 
