OYSTER-PAEKS. 309 



seaports along our coast are famed for their oyster-stews, as are, 

 in France and Belgium, Marennes, Havre, Dieppe, Treport, and 

 Ostend, where real British natives are cleaned and fattened for 

 continental consumption. 



The renowned oyster-parks of Ostend, the oldest of- which 

 celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1866, are extensive 

 walled basins, communicating by sluices with the open sea, so 

 that the water can be let in and out with every returning tide. 

 As microscopic algae and animalculse are produced in much 

 greater numbers in these tranquil reservoirs than in the bois- 

 terous sea, the oysters find here much more abundant food, and 

 being detached one from the other, they can also open and close 

 their shells with greater facility, so that nothing hinders their 

 growth. Thus fostered and improved by constant attention, 

 they are greatly superior in flavour to the rough children of 

 nature that are sent without any further preparation to market 

 and condemned to the knife soon after having been dragged 

 forth from their submarine abode. The highly prized green 

 oysters owe their colour to the number of ulvse, enteromorphae, 

 and microscopic infusorise, that are abundantly generated in 

 the parks, and communicate their verdant tinge to the animal 

 that swallows them. 



In spite of their high price, which unfortunately debars the 

 poorer classes from their enjoyment, the consumption of oysters 

 is immense ; so that in a commercial point of view they are by 

 far the most important of all the mollusc tribes. Of the quan- 

 tities eaten in London alone, it is impossible to give even an 

 approximate guess, as no .reliable statistics can be arrived at. 

 Exclusive of those bred in Essex and Kent, in the rivers Crouch, 

 Blackwater, and Colne, and in the channel of the Swale and the 

 Medway, vast numbers are brought from Jersey, Poole, and 

 other places along the coast. The Channel Islands alone, which 

 export about 100,000 bushels a year, send a great part of their 

 oysters to the metropolitan market. 



The luxurious tables of Paris likewise consume unnumbered 

 millions, and when we consider that, thanks to the railroad, 

 even the most distant inland towns of the Continent may now be 

 supplied with Ostend oysters, we cannot wonder that their 

 price has risen enormously with the constantly increasing de- 

 mand. 



Y 



