TURKEY AND OYSTERS. 237 



over the mouth, carrying with it the invisible objects 

 on which the oyster feeds. So powerful, indeed, is the 

 action of these wondrous little appendages, that if a 

 small portion of the gill be snipped off and placed in 

 the water it will swim away as if it were living, urged 

 by the invisible fibres, which work as briskly as ever, 

 though severed from the body. At the mouth the lips 

 take cognizance of the supplies, and evidently possess 

 the power of accepting the good articles and rejecting 

 the bad, just as the editor of a magazine decides upon 

 the articles which daily inundate his desk. 



There is yet another office performed by the gill 

 membranes. Everyone is acquainted with that little 

 memoria technica which connects oysters with the 

 letter K, and tells us that they are out of season in the 

 months which do not possess this delightful letter. In 

 May, June, July, and August the oysters are not only 

 out of legal season, but are so in literal fact, being 

 thin, and quite unfit for food. Practically, however, 

 the oyster season is anticipated by a month, and on 

 August 1 the costermongers ply their busy trade 

 through the streets ; at every corner the itinerant fish- 

 monger invites his customers to the gritty board, the 

 great coarse molluscs, and the bottle of suspicious 

 vinegar; while the children erect little edifices with 

 the shells, call them grottoes, put an inch of lighted 

 candle into them at night, and vex the souls of pas- 

 sengers with iterated requests for halfpence, which, 



