242 OUT OF DOORS. 



This circumstance explains the travellers' tale so 

 long discredited, that in some places the oysters grew 

 on trees. It is now a well-known fact that if trees 

 growing near oyster-beds dip their branches into the 

 water, the young molluscs are sure to settle on the 

 immersed twigs, and by their increasing weight drag 

 the bough still deeper. The newly-sunken branches 

 are in their turn covered by fresh colonies, until at last 

 the bough is fairly loaded with its strange fruit. 



As far as is yet known the experiments have 

 answered admirably, and it is sincerely to be hoped 

 that the ingenious projectors may make their fortunes 

 as they deserve. For it is no less meritorious to render 

 fertile mile after mile of barren coast, to produce in 

 countless myriads an esculent so nourishing and so 

 palatable as the oyster, than to perform the much-lauded 

 and laudable feat of making two blades of grass grow 

 where only one grew before. We hope soon to sow an 

 annual oyster crop as we now sow an annual crop of 

 grain, for the operation bids fair to be as easy in one 

 case as in the other, the hopes of success are equal, and 

 the profit, if anything, rather inclines to the mollusc 

 than to the cereal. 



There are even pearls to be found in the common 

 oyster, though they are never large enough or pure 

 enough to be of any commercial value. I have many 

 specimens of such pearls all procured by myself, and it 

 is rather a curious fact that I have always found them 

 periodically. On one occasion, out of a poor half- 



