_BIVALVE MOLLUSCA. 381 
ment which prepares the stomach for its proper function, digestion ; 
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—dquite a bank 
must he have eaten! He was unfortunately struck with apoplexy at 
table before a pézé de foie 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 hasalways been famous forits oysters, and its pearls are said 
to have been the chief incentive to Cesar’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 Ambrosianz ” 
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 makeup 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 
