CHAP. vin. ] OYSTER-EATERS. 343 



snapped his pearly door close upon the finger of the intruder, 

 causing him some little pain. After releasing his wounded 

 digit, the inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his 

 mouth. "Delightful !" exclaimed he, opening wide his eyes. 

 " What is this ?" and again he sucked his thumb. Then the 

 great truth flashed upon him, that he had found out a new 

 delight had in fact accidentally achieved the most important 

 discovery ever made up to that date ! He proceeded at once 

 to the verification of his thought. Taking up a stone, 

 he forced open the doors of the oyster, and gingerly tried 

 a piece of the mollusc itself. Delicious was the result ; and 

 so, there and then, with no other condiment than the juice of 

 the animal, with no reaming brown stout or pale chablis to 

 wash down the repast, no nicely-cut, well-buttered brown 

 bread, did that solitary anonymous man inaugurate the oyster 

 banquet. Another way of the story is that the man who ate 

 the first oyster was compelled to do so for a punishment : 



" The man had sure a palate covered o'er 

 With brass, or steel, that on the rocky shore 

 First broke the oozy oyster's pearly coat, 

 And risk'd the living morsel down his throat." 



Ever since the apocryphal period of this legend, men have 

 gone on eating oysters. Poets, princes, pontiffs, orators, states- 

 men, and wits have gluttonised over the oyster-bed. Oysters 

 were at one time, it is true, in danger of being forgotten. 

 From the fourth century to about the fifteenth they were not 

 much in use ; but from that date to the present time the de- 

 mand has never slackened. Going back to the times which 

 we now regard as classic, we are told as I will by and by 

 relate in more detail when I come to describe the art of oyster- 

 farming that we owe the original idea of pisciculture to a 

 certain Sergius Grata, who invented an oyster-pond in which 

 to breed oysters, not for his own table, but for profit. We 



