302 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
variety iincia and even if it prove to be the same there is sufficient 
difference to make a distinctive name useful for reference. 
The “ Pandoure ” or Forth Shells seem to have been very 
plentiful at one time, although, unless replaced, nearly absent 
from the Forth waters through want of care in dredging. Mr. 
Calderwood tells me that in the season as many as thirty smack 
loads were sent to London. Odd valves of this larger type are 
occasionally found in the later London debris, and have got 
confused with our own genuine var. Riitupina. Its consumption 
in the Scottish capital seems to have been stupendous, as my 
informant tells me that in clearing the site of an old tavern, the 
workmen had to cut through a bed of shells 15 feet thick ; the 
relics of many an old time feast ! I have not seen this Rutupinian 
type from any continental locality. The common edible oyster 
(1 ante p. 193) of our eastern coasts probably originated in the 
North Sea as a deep-sea shel ! , some examples obtained from an 
old site near the original mouth of the Aide River having their 
irregular manner of growth. 
The shell here called var. Celtic a (p. 200 ante), had its metro¬ 
polis, and probably its origin, in the far North. It abounds in 
the Shetlands. One of this type was figured by Dr. Oyen of the 
Christian a Museum from Vandelsbakken in Nordhjem the 
most northerly locality to which the oyster has been traced. 
I have a good example from Uddevalla. 
Profiteering in Oysters was not unknown in olden days. A 
certain Roger Calf was in A.D. 1375 presented before one of the 
Norwich Leet Courts for forestalling, otherwise cornering, the 
market, so that “ whereas the people had been wont to have 
100 oysters for ijd,” Roger sold them at an advance for 2d. or 
3d. 
Two pence for the long hundred (120) seems to have been the 
normal price for the next two hundred years. 
Gad wall in Essex.—On November 7th, 1920, I observed, two 
Gadwall (Anas strepera) on the lake in Navestock Park, Essex. . . . 
The only record I can find of this species in the County since The Birds 
of Essex was published in 1890 is that of one obtained at Manningtree in 
Dec. 1913 (British Birds, vii., p. 323), and Mr. Miller Christy {Viet. Hist. 
Essex) describes it as a very scarce winter visitor.— William E. Glegg, 
in British Birds, xiv., p. 188. 
