GINGLYMACONCHA. OSTREADE. 35% 
dredgers (by law of the Court of Admiralty) have liberty to take 
all manner of oysters of what size soever ; when they have taken 
them, they gently raise the small brood from the eultch, 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 per- 
mitted to take the stone, shell, &c., that the spa¢ is upon, one 
shell having very often twenty spats. 
«After the month of May, it is felony to carry away the 
eultch, and punishable to take any other oysters, unless it be 
those of a size (that is to say) about the bigness of a half- 
crown piece ; or when, the two shells being shut, a fair shilling 
will rattle between them. 
“The places where these oysters are chiefly catcht, are the 
Pont-burnham, Maldern and Colne waters: the latter, taking 
its name from the river Colne, which passeth by Colne-Chester, 
gives the name to that town, and runs into a creek of the sea, 
at a place called the Hithe, being the suburbs of the town. 
“This brood and other oysters, they carry to the creeks of 
the sea, at Brickelsea, Mersey, Langno, Fingrego, Wivenho, 
Tolesbury and Saltcoase, and there throw them into the Chan- 
nel, which they call their beds or layers, where they grow and 
fatten : in two or three years the smallest brood will be of the 
size aforesaid. 
“Those oysters that they would have green*, they put into 
pits three feet deep in the salt-marshes, where they only over- 
flow at spring-tides, to which they have their sluices, and let 
out the salt-water, until it is about a foot and a haif deep: 
these pits, from the quality of the soil, cooperating with the 
heat of the sun, will become green+, and communicate their 
colour to the oysters that are put into them for four or five 
* It has been supposed that the fine green colour is owing to the acetate 
or sulphate of iron contained in water in those artificial beds in which 
they are kept: this is, however, an erroneous idea, as both these are more 
or less destructive to animal life in general, and especially to these soft 
animals. 
+ This may possibly arise from a species of marine conferva, very com- 
monly found in salt marshes, though generally modified by the admixture 
of the fresh water, in its appearance and nature. 
