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oysters were obtained in great plenty at Reculvers itself, 

 the River Wantsume, no doubt, contributing that essential 

 proportion of fresh water required to improve and fatten 

 the oyster. The River Wantsume, the ancient boundary 

 between the Isle of Thanet and this part of Kent, is now 

 nearly dried up, though once an important water highway 

 communicating with the River Stour by way of 

 Richborough. The Roman Emperor, Severus Pertinax, 

 built a castle at Reculvers, and there was a mint for the 

 coinage of Roman money. 



Speaking of the Romans, and their known 

 Romans and p ar tiality for oysters at the commencement 

 ^ S er of their epicurean banquets, a writer in the 



Table once remarked alas, without giving his authority 

 that " it may not be generally known that the Roman 

 Empresses, 'who were not always the most virtuous and 

 devoted of wives, frequently employed the bivalve as an 

 agreeable method of administering poison to their lords to 

 say nothing of their lovers." While not giving too much 

 credit to this genial aspersion of the characters of a, neces- 

 sarily, limited class of Roman matron, it may be quoted as 

 a possible indication that, in those days, the oyster was 

 occasionally employed to give the happy despatch, because 

 it enjoyed a reputation, among emperors, as far above 

 suspicion as it should have with us in the present day, as 

 we shall see presently when we come to the report of an 

 eminent analyst, though its high qualities are no longer 

 employed to disguise such a base purpose. That the 

 Romans themselves cultivated oysters we know from Pliny, 

 who tells us that in the days of Lucius Crassus they were 

 transferred from natural beds at Brindisi and bred by 

 Sergius Grata in the Lucrine Lake at Baiae, and in his 

 letters Pliny makes frequent allusion to oysters as an article 



