THE OTSTEE. 29 



Brittany ; but the same flavour and colour can be pro- 

 duced by putting oysters into pits where the water is 

 about three feet deep in the salt marshes, and where 

 the sun has great power. In these they become green 

 in three or four days; for these colours are derived 

 from the elementary substance on which they feed ; not, 

 however, that it produces any peculiar difference as to 

 flavour. I may, however, as well decide at once that 

 the green oyster is, to my taste, the oyster 'par excellence, 

 in which decision I shall doubtless be borne out by most 

 gourmets whose knowledge extends to a choice of the 

 good things of this life. 



I know, in this, some of my friends north of the 

 Tweed may differ, and, if still living, amongst them I 

 should have had- to include Professor Wilson, so long 

 the very life and soul of oyster-suppers and whisky^ 

 toddy. But nobody can judge of the true flavour of an 

 oyster without well masticating his delicious food ; and, 

 by his own showing, both he and the ^'Shepherd" 

 bolted their *' Bandores." These same '' Bandores," 

 by the way, are large fat oysters, much relished in 

 modern Athens, which are said to owe their superior 

 excellence to the brackish contents of the pans of the 

 adjacent salt-works of Brestonpans flowing out upon the 

 beds. Taken away young and transferred to the Ostend 

 beds, these Bandores furnish the very best oysters to be 

 met with on the Continent, surpassing even the far- 

 famed ones of Blensburg, in Holstein. Had '' Christo- 

 pher Xorth" tickled the fish fii'st to death with his 

 incisors before he swallowed it, I might have submitted 

 my judgment to his ; but how can a man who bolted 



