368 TiMEHRl. 



diuers little brooks of fresh water, and one salt riuer 

 that had store of oisters vpon the branches of the trees,* 

 and were very salt and wel tasted, Al their oisters 

 grow vpon those boughs and spraies, and not on the 

 ground : the like is commonlie seene in the West Indies 

 and else where. This tree is described bv Andrewe 

 Theuet in his French Antartique, and the forme figured 

 in his booke as a plante verye straunge, and by Plinie 



Writing in 1837, Joseph says, ' At this day the Arawacks call La Brea, 

 Piche, as they call the river opposite Guarapiche. History of Trinidad 

 p. 117. 



* The first accounts brought to Europe of oysters growing on trees 

 raised as great astonishment as the relation of El Dorade itself; and to 

 those who were unacquainted with the faft that these molluscous animals 

 seleft the branches of the tree, on which they fix themselves during 

 high water, when they are immersed, it may certainly sound strange 

 and wonderful that shells, which as we know live in Europe on banks 

 in the depths of the sea, should be found in the West Indies on the 

 branches of trees. They attach themselves chiefly to the mangrove 

 tree {Rhizophora Mangle, Linn.), which grows along the shore of the 

 sea and rivers with brackish water, and covers immense trafts of coast, 

 rooting and vegetating in a manner very peculiar to that tree, even as 

 far as low water mark. Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the 

 World (book i. chap. iv. seftion 2), compares it erroneously with the 

 Indian fig-tree (Ficus indicaj, which Becanus considered to be the tree 

 of knowledge, or of life. Raleigh observes in his description that he had 

 seen five hundred oysters hanging on one of the branches (which he 

 calls cords) of a mangrove tree. The water flowing off during ebb 

 leaves the branches with the oysters attached to them high and dry. 

 Three species of mollusca are chiefly found on the mangrove trees, 

 namely Ostrea Rhizophora (Au£t. ?), O. folium, and a species of 

 Mytilus. The 0. Rhitophorce is eaten, and in Porto Rico the price of 

 a barrel of these mangrove oysters is a piaster. We differ with Raleigh 

 respefling their superior taste ; they are at the best mere substitutes 

 for an European oyster, very small, and not so ^eWcaie.— Schomburgk's 

 Note. 



