82 EDIBLE BEITISH MOLLUSKS. 



America/ suggests acclimatizing it on our coasts ;* and 

 this has been done on the French coast, at Arcachon, 

 and also at Saint- Vaast-la-Hogue. He tells us that 

 oysters are never out of season at New York. They 

 are brought from the shores of Virginia, and planted 

 to grow and fatten, so that every quality and flavour 

 can be produced by the varying situations of the banks, 

 and the time of planting and the depth of water regu- 

 lates the season of the oyster, and keeps the market in 

 constant supply. It is not only in seaport towns in 

 America that oysters are eaten in enormous quantities, 

 but towns a thousand miles inland are well supplied ; 

 and oyster suppers are as common in Cincinnati or St. 

 Louis as in New York or Baltimore.f 



The amount of capital sunk in the oyster trade in the 

 vicinity of New York exceeds £1,000,000. 



Oysters are very beneficial to persons who suffer from 

 weak digestions, but then they must be eaten raw, and 

 without vinegar or pepper, and I have known an invalid 

 able to eat oysters when quite unable to take any other 

 food ; and oysters are also recommended for consumptive 

 patients, as they contain iodine. 



The shells of the oyster and murex were used by the 

 Romans as tooth powder, and oyster-shells are now used 

 for manure. 



Juan Francisco de San Antonio, in his ' Chronicos de 



* In 1865, Sir Gardner Wilkinson found on the Tenby coast many- 

 fragments of the shells of Ostrea Virgitiica, and was led to suppose that 

 this species of oyster (hitherto unknown or unnoticed in Britain) existed 

 there ; and he succeeded in obtaining some living and perfect speci- 

 mens, the greatest number being met with in the neighbourhood of the 

 small stream which runs into the sea on the south sands of Tenby. 

 (See ' Zoologist,' 1865, p. 9558.) 



t ' Forty Tears in America,' vol. i. p. 268. 



