OYSTER-BEDS IN THE THAMES. 249 



borough, in the Isle of Sheppey, is famous for producing 

 the Milton oysters, which are of good size and excellent 

 flavour. The Faversham Company is reputed to be the 

 most ancient in the Thames. There are many beds belong- 

 ing to private gentlemen. Of these Mr. Allston is the 

 largest owner; and he employs from forty to fifty vessels 

 some being merely dredging vessels of eight or ten tons, 

 and others, smacks of thirty, forty, or fifty tons, which 

 carry young oysters, for breeding purposes, from Ireland 

 and the Channel Islands. 



The largest and most fertile are those of Whitstable. 

 They belong to a kind of joint-stock company of fisher- 

 men, into which there is, however, no other way of en- 

 trance but by birth, since none but the "freedredgermen" 

 of the town can hold shares. When a proprietor dies, 

 his interest in the company dies with him ; but his widow, 

 if he leaves one, obtains a pension. The public and 

 private oyster-beds at Whitstable employ upwards of three 

 thousand hands, and their returns have been estimated at 

 from 100,000 to 120,000 per annum. The affairs of 

 the company are regulated by twelve directors, who are 

 known as " the jury." The area occupied by the " lay- 

 ings " measures fully a mile and a half square, and from 

 their long-continued prosperity have received the name of 

 the " happy fishing-grounds." 



The business of the company is to feed oysters for the 

 London and other markets ; therefore they do not breed 

 them. They buy the spat or brood in various quarters, 

 and then lay it down in their grounds to grow and fatten. 

 Sometimes, it is true, the company's own oysters produce 

 a spat ; namely, when the spawn, or " fiotsom," as the 

 dredgers call it, emitted from their own beds chances to 



