OYSTER PARKS. 309 
seaports along our coast are famed for their oyster-stews, as are, 
in France and Belgium, Marennes, Havre, Dieppe, Tréport, and 
Ostend, where real British natives are cleaned and fattened for 
continental consumption. 
The renowned oyster-parks of Ostend, the oldest of which 
celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1866, are extensive 
walled basins, communicating by sluices with the open sea, so 
that the water can be let in and out with every returning tide. 
As microscopic algze and animaleule are produced in much 
greater numbers in these tranquil reservoirs than in the bois- 
terous sea, the oysters find here much more abundant food, and 
being detached one from the other, they can also open and close 
their shells with greater facility, so that nothing hinders their 
growth. Thus fostered and improved by constant attention, 
they are greatly superior in flavour to the rough children of 
nature that are sent without any further preparation to market 
and condemned to the knife soon after having been dragged 
forth from their submarine abode. The highly prized green 
oysters owe their colour to the number of ulve, enteromorphe, 
and microscopic infusorie, that are abundantly generated in 
the parks, and communicate their verdant tinge to the animal 
that swallows them. 
In spite of their high price, which unfortunately debars the 
poorer classes from their enjoyment, the consumption of oysters 
is immense ; so that in a commercial point of view they are by 
far the most important of all the molluse tribes. Of the quan- 
tities eaten in London alone, it is impossible to give even an 
approximate guess, as no reliable statistics can be arrived at. 
Exclusive of those bred in Essex and Kent, in the rivers Crouch, 
Blackwater, and Colne, and in the channel of the Swale and the 
Medway, vast numbers are brought from Jersey, Poole, and 
other places along the coast. The Channel Islands alone, which 
export about 100,000 bushels a year, send a great part of their 
oysters to the metropohtan market. 
The luxurious tables of Paris likewise consume unnumbered 
millions, and when we consider that, thanks to the railroad, 
even the most distant inland towns of the Continent may now be 
supplied with Ostend oysters, we cannot wonder that their 
price has risen enormously with the constantly increasing de- 
mand. 
Y 
