BIVALVE MOLLUSC A. ' 381 



ment which prepares the stomach for its proper function, digestion j 

 in a word, the oyster is the key of that paradise called appetite. 

 " There is no alimentary substance, not even excepting bread, which 

 does not produce indigestion under given circumstances," says 

 Reveille-Parise, " but oysters never." This is an homage which is 

 due to them : " We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always, 

 and in profusion, without fear of indigestion." Dr. Gastaldi could 

 swallow, we are assured, his forty dozen with impunity quite a bank 

 must he have eaten ! He was unfortunately struck with apoplexy at 

 table before a pate defoie gras. 



Montaigne quaintly says, to be subject to colic, or deny oneself 

 oysters, presents two evils to choose from, since one must choose 

 between the two, and hazard something for his pleasure. 



England has always been famous for its oysters, and its pearls are said 

 to have been the chief incentive to Caesar's invasion. It is not, there- 

 fore, to be supposed that British magnates could be indifferent to the 

 " native." But the bivalve has perhaps been more celebrated, in prose 

 and verse, north of the Tweed than south, where silent enjoyment is 

 more relished than noisy demonstration. Dugald Stewart, Hume, 

 Cullen, and other Scotch philosophers of the last centuries, had their 

 "oyster ploys" as an accompaniment to their "high jinks," in the 

 quaint and dingy taverns of the old town of Edinburgh ; and what the 

 bivalve has been to modern celebrities let the " Noctes Ambrosianse " 

 tell. 



The oyster may thus be said to be the palm and glory of the table. 

 It is considered the very perfection of digestive aliment. From Stock- 

 holm to Naples, from London to St. Petersburg, it is always in re- 

 quest. At St. Petersburg they cost a paper rouble (nearly one 

 shilling), and at Stockholm fivepence each. For the last year or 

 two the English oyster eater has had to pay from two shillings to half- 

 a-crown a dozen for choice natives. 



For his daily nourishment a man of middle size requires a 

 quantity of food equal to twelve ounces of dry nitrogenised substance. 

 According to this calculation, it would be necessary to swallow sixteen 

 dozen of oysters to make up the necessary quantity. The small pro- 

 portion of nutritive matter explains the extreme digestibility of the 

 oyster. It also explains the immense consumption of them attributed 

 to the Emperor Vitellius. Without this being so Vitellius, all emperor 

 and master of the world as he was, never could have absorbed twelve 

 hundred oysters by way of whetting his appetite. 



The gourmets were long of opinion that the quadrangular-shaped 

 muscle or cushion in the oyster was the most savoury and exciting 



