82 
EDIBLE BRITISH 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. t 
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. 
J uan 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 Virginica, 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 ‘ Torty Years in America,’ voL i. p. 268. 
