OSTREA. 311 



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 INIay, 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) about the bigness of an half-crown piece, 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, Maiden, and Colne- 

 waters. "" '"' * This brood, and other oysters, they carry 

 to creeks of the sea at Brickel-sea, Mersey, Langro, 

 Fringrego, Wivenho, Tolesbury, 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 foot deep, in the 

 salt-marshes, which are overflowed only at spring-tides 

 to which they have sluices, and let out the sea-water 

 iintil it is about a foot and 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 



