MOLLUSCS AS FOOD 



293 



and dredgers', who, from father to son, have carried on the 

 business of an oyster fishery during, it is probable, a period of 



Fig. 1213. — Wheeler's Beehive Collector. Much reduced. 



at least two thousand years. It was about a.d. 80 that Julius 

 Agricola first exported oysters from the neighbourhood of the 



Fig. 1214.— Whitstable Oyster-Dredger at Work. Dredges on the rail. 



Reculvers to Rome, and for the ancestors of the Whitstable 

 free dredgers Rome was, during about three centuries, their 



Vol. IV. 



114 



