THE OYSTER 



tinguished from the common whelk by the white and 

 purple or yellow and brown shades of the shell, as well 

 as by the lengthy spines with which the latter is covered. 



From such a motley heap, then, the brood has to be 

 sorted, or " culled " for the Kent fishermen still use the 

 good old word ; and here is labour more irksome and, in 

 the long run, more tiring, than the hauling up ; for the 

 men are down on their knees, or bent double over the 

 heap, gathering up the little shells faster than the 

 stranger could pick them out with his eye. Brood shells 

 are of a pearly white till they are about a year old, and 

 at that age their size is anything from that of a sixpence 

 to that of a halfpenny ; older brood are of a delicate 

 pink on the round valve, and brown on the flat. They 

 may be said to increase in diameter about an inch each 

 year, up to the age of three ; after which time the growth 

 is more a matter of the shell's thickening, and there is 

 not necessarily any great difference in circumference be- 

 tween a three-year-old oyster and a fully matured one. 



In a very few minutes each dredger has singled out 

 from his heap everything that he wants and has thrown 

 it into his bucket; and now, with a couple of bits of 

 board he rakes together all the mass of weed, stones, and 

 rubbish preparatory to shooting it through a port-hole. 

 Before he throws the heap away there is one more item 

 of it that it will not be going away from our subject 

 to glance at ; the sea-urchin or, as he would call it, the 

 "burr," for whose creation he firmly believes the Evil 

 One to have been responsible. Most people are better 

 acquainted with its shell-like skeleton than with the 



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