217 
the most delicate food, and which has accordingly been eagerly 
sought for in all ages, as one of the chief luxuries of the table. 
Although the consumption of them has been immense from the 
time of the Romans to the present day, yet such is the rapidity 
of their increase, that their abundance does not appear to be 
limited. It is believed that the Romans first devised the present 
method of improving their good qualities, by transporting them 
when young to favorable situations, where there is an admixture of 
fresh water. The shells were used by the Athenians in perform- 
ance of their right of suffrage, during the earlier periods of their 
government, and the sentence of condemnation or acquittal of the 
arraigned, was marked upon a shell ; whence the word ostracism 
had its origin. 
The oysters of England are held in higher estimation than those 
of G-ermany, France or Italy. We are informed that a foreign 
embassador at the Hague gave a sumptuous entertainment, during 
which oysters were introduced, that were supposed by their color 
to be from England. But all who ate of them were immediately 
seized with violent and continued vomiting. On enquiry it was 
ascertained that the oysterman had tinted the common oyster with 
verdegris, to obtain a higher price for them as English oysters. 
It is related of Apicius that he had a method of preserving oys- 
ters for a long time, and that he sent them from Italy to the Em- 
peror Trajan in Persia, as fresh as the day they were taken from 
the water. There is doubtless some exaggeration in this, and it is 
probable that his method may not have been preferable to that of 
our oystermen, who transport the animal in kegs to great distances. 
Aldrovandus and others of the earlier writers, entertained a singu- 
lar and erroneous notion relative to the crab and the oyster. They 
state that the crab, in order to obtain the animal of the oyster 
without danger to their own claws, watch their opportunity when 
the shell is open, to advance without noise and cast a pebble be- 
tween their shells, to prevent their closing, and then extract the 
animal in safety, What craft V’ exclaims the author in ani- 
mals that are destitute of reason and voice.^^ We scarcely need 
to add, that the craft existed only in the imagination of a person 
who may have seen a crab feeding on an oyster that had fortuit- 
ously closed on a pebble. 
In the acceptation of Linne the genus Ostrea included numer- 
17 
