BRITISH OYSTERS : OLD AND NEW. I97 
Book, 1832, that the oysters brought from Lynn were large, 
about the size of a horse’s hoof, and were opened with pincers. 
To be stupid as an oyster is a Breton proverb, and Jeffreys 
makes a quotation relative to its silence ; but sometime in the 
“ forties ” of the last century a whistling oyster made the fame 
of an oyster bar in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, immortalized 
in Punch and in most writers on London topography. 
If Dicquemart is right ( Journ . de Physique, vol. xxviii., p. 
244), oysters do possess a gleam of intelligence, as he says that 
oysters dredged from a depth never uncovered at low tides, 
open their shells, lose their water and die quickly, but if placed 
in reservoirs and only left dry for a short time learn to keep 
the shells closed, and live for a considerable period when wholly 
deprived of water outwardly. 
VAR. DEFORMIS Lamarck. 
“ Shell small, sub-oval, variable, fixed by the lower valve. 
Habitat European seas, inhabiting dead shells, more often inside 
the Pinna. Length, 8-n mm.” (Anim. sans Vert. p. 229, no. 31). 
Dr. Turton [Conchylia Insula/um Britannicarum, 1822), 
makes no reference to this form by name, but says “ a small 
variety is found fixed to serpulae or the inside of old oyster shells 
and sometimes in the cavities of rocks, with the upper valve 
flat and a little scaly, the under value very convex and hollow, 
especially under the hinge, the beak of the concave or under 
valve often much lengthened, an evidence of age ; and it is fre¬ 
quently deformed, and distorted by contact with harder objects. 
It may be a distinct species, as it answers to the character given 
by Lamarck to his 0 . deformis.’' 
Defrance also mentions it as a very small shell, sub-oval, 
variable, lower valve very thin, and fixed, 8-20 mm. in length. 
On dead shells. 
Jeffreys describes it as small, distorted, and often nearly 
cylindrical; and so far agrees with Lamarck. But the remainder 
of his note, and his figure, appear to refer to another shell, dealt 
with elsewhere, post. 
0 . deformis is also referred to by B. B. and D., in their 
Roussillon Memoir, but they observe that, like the var. 
parasitica, it may be regarded as an abnormal form of small size. 
Dr. Jeffreys speaks of 0 . deformis as occupying the crevices 
