CHAPTER XXI. 



OYSTERS. 



" The best way to cook an oyster is to eat him raw." ANON. 



THAT most charming naturalist and genial observer of 

 all things animate, Frank Buckland, used to say that 

 oysters, like horses, have their points. " The points of an 

 oyster are," he tells us, " first the shape, which to be 

 perfect should resemble very much the petal of a rose-leaf. 

 Next, the thickness of the shell ; a first-class thoroughbred 

 native should have a shell of the tenuity of thin china or a 

 Japanese tea-cup. It should also have an almost metallic 

 ring, and a peculiar opalescent lustre on the inner side ; 

 the hollow for the animal of the oyster should be as much 

 like an egg-cup as possible. Lastly, the flesh itself should 

 be white and firm, and nut-like in taste. It is by taking the 

 average proportion of meat to shell that oysters should be 

 critically judged. The oysters at the head of the list are 

 of course ' natives ; ' * the proportion of a well-fed native is 

 one-fourth meat. The nearest approach to natives, both in 

 beauty and fatness, are the oysters of Milford in South 

 Wales. The deep-sea oysters, such as the white-faced 

 things dredged up in the Channel between England and 



1 " Natives" are oysters artificially reared, those found naturally being 

 termed "sea-oysters." 



