130 EDIBLE BRITISH MOLLUSCA. 



in ' Macmillan's Magazine/ No. 36, October, 1862: — 

 u The brood is carefully laid down in the oyster-beds 

 off Whitstable, and allowed to grow for three, perhaps 

 four years. The oysters in different stages are marked 

 off by means of long poles, so that the shell-fish farm 

 is divided into separate fields, each being in a particular 

 stage of growth. At the time when the oysters are 

 lifted for the London or other markets, they are mea- 

 sured by being thrown against a wire grating, and all 

 those under a certain size are thrown again into the 

 water. To give an idea of the business done in the 

 oyster trade, it may be stated that in 1860 the Whit- 

 stable men took as mucli as £50,000, for native oysters 

 alone, which, after deducting the cost of the brood, 

 would still leave a handsome profit." There are exten- 

 sive fisheries opposite Milton, those of the Cheney Rock. 

 We are told that in a single season, more than 50,000 

 bushels of " natives 9i were sent from this one fishery to 

 London.* Mr. Frank Buckland defined a " native " as 

 being a thoroughbred oyster, and its geographical 

 limits would be at and about the mouth of the Thames, 

 from Harwich on the north, down to Margate on the 

 south, and it is indigenous to the soil, in contradistinc- 

 tion to the Irish, Milford, and other oysters, which come 

 from different parts of the world. f 



The " Milton natives " bear the bell, or may be said 

 to be the pearls among British oysters. King John 

 granted these fisheries to the Abbot of Faversham, in 

 whose hands they remained till the dissolution, and 

 they have been dredged from the earliest times by a 



* Murray's ' Handbook, Kent and Sussex/ p. 64. 

 f ' Report on Oyster Fish- ries,' 1876. 



