OSTREAD^. 
79 
of emerging banks is anxiously applied for by the inha- 
bitants of the coast, —the more so, as improvements in 
the working of this branch of trade are of daily occur- 
rence. Thus, Dr. Kemmerer, of R4 covers a number 
of tiles with a coating of a kind of mastic, brittle 
enough to enable him to detach the small oysters from 
it. When this coating is well covered with seed, he 
gets it off all in one piece, which he carries to the place 
where the seed is to grow. The same tile he coats a 
second time, and so on.^^ 
In France, oysters having a green tint are considered 
great delicacies, and the art of greening oysters is car- 
ried to the greatest perfection on the coasts of Aunis, 
whence come the celebrated green oysters of Marennes. 
The oysters are, in reality, as white as the others, and 
only receive their green colour and peculiar flavour 
when transplanted to certain beds, covered with a small 
submarine kind of moss, formed of the slime deposited 
by the sea from the small gulf called the Riviere de 
Seudre. The ^Moniteur^ published a letter from the 
Mayor of Marennes, in which he states that the trade in 
green oysters had increased so much during the last fifteen 
years, that the white oyster-beds in the neighbourhood 
had become insufficient to stock those peculiar beds 
where the creature acquires the green colour and that 
delicious taste which causes the Marennes oyster to be so 
eagerly sought after. In order to meet the demand, 
white oysters had to be imported from Spain, Bretagne, ' 
Ireland, and England. A considerable quantity of oys- 
ters are imported from Falmouth, and these contain 
copper, which imparts an acrid taste. They are gene- 
rally, on their arrival, deposited in certain beds apart 
from the others, and there kept for six months ; after 
