CHAP, viii.] h KM AND FOE, OYSTERS. 373 



companies, having been in existence for a few centuries. All 

 of these companies grow the "natives/' and I may explain that 

 the portion of the beds set apart for the rearing of "natives" 

 is as sacred as the waxen cells devoted to the growth of queen 

 bees, and the coarser denizens of the mid-channel are not 

 allowed to be mixed therewith. The management of all the 

 Kent and Essex oyster companies is pretty much the same, 

 but there are also gentlemen who trade solely upon their own 

 account ; there is Mr. Allston, for instance, a London oyster- 

 merchant, who keeps his own fleet of vessels, and does a very 

 large business in this particular shell-fish. 



The demand for native and other oysters by the Lon- 

 doners alone is something wonderful, and constitutes of 

 itself a large branch of commerce as the numerous gaily- 

 lit shell-fish shops of the Strand and Haymarket will 

 testify. These emporiums for the sale of oysters and 

 stout are mostly fed through Billingsgate, which is the 

 chief piscatorial bourse of the great metropolis. It is 

 not easy to arrive at correct statistics of what London 

 requires in the way of oysters ; but, if we set the number 

 down as being nearly 800,000,000 we shall not be very far 

 wrong. To provide these, the dredgermen or fisher people at 

 Colchester, and other places on the Essex and Kent coasts, 

 prowl about the sea-shore and pick up all the little oysters 

 they can find these ranging from the size of a threepenny- 

 piece to a shilling ; and persons and companies having lay- 

 ings purchase them to be nursed and fattened for the table, 

 as already described. At other places the spawn itself is 

 collected, by picking it from the pieces of stone, or the old 

 oyster-shells to which it may have adhered ; and it is 

 nourished in pits, as at Burnham, for the purpose of being- 

 sold to the Whitstable people, who carefully lay that brood 

 in their grounds. A good idea of the oyster-traffic may be 

 obtained from the fact that, in some years, the Whitstablo. 



