242 AN ACT OF HEROISM. 



are all arranged in fantastic order, with bits of candle in 

 the interior, to illuminate them at night ; and their archi- 

 tects sally forth to greet each passer-by with the suppli- 

 catory salutation, " Please, remember the grotto." It 

 may not be doubted that we have here a relic of the old 

 days of pilgrimages and saints, which has survived the 

 changes of upwards of three hundred years. 



Buttes, in his " Dyet's Dry Dinner," published in 

 1599, says : " It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all 

 months that have not an r in their names, to eat an 

 oister." And modern physiological research seems to 

 have proved that oysters should not be eaten from May 

 to August, inclusive. In the latter month, however, they 

 always reappear in the London markets. 



According to an old adage, " He was a bold man who 

 first ate an oyster." How the discovery was made of the 

 edible qualities of this now famous mollusc, is thus plea- 

 santly told by Mr. Bertram : * 



Once upon a time, he says, a man of melancholy mood 

 was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and 

 listening to the murmur of the " sad sea-waves " or, as 

 Mr. Disraeli would say, of the "melancholy main" when 

 he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell, all coated over 

 with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unpre- 

 possessing that he kicked it aside with his foot ; where- 

 upon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treat- 

 ment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, 

 preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. 

 Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone 

 within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior 



* Bertram, " Harvest of the Sea," pp. 342, 343. 



