447 
Oysters on Trees . 
nesse like leather, wearing small knops like those of the cypresse. 
From this tree hang downe many branches, each about the bignesse of a 
good walking sticke into the water, smooth, lithe, pithy within, over¬ 
flown e with the tide, and hanging as thicke of oysters as they can 
sticke together, being the only fruit the tree beareth, begotten thereof, 
as it seemeth, by the salt water.” ( Purchas , vol. i. p. 416.) 
We often read of these oyster-bearing trees in the nar¬ 
rations of the Elizabethan travellers. Pigafetta mentions 
the close relation of the shell to the tree, although he 
does not, like the last writer, call it the fruit:— 
“In that part of this island, which is toward the maine land 
[Loanda, off Congo], in certaine low places there grow certaine trees 
which (when the water of the ocean ebbeth) discover themselves, and 
at the feet thereof you shall find certaine shel-fishes cleaving as fast to 
the trees as may bee, having within them a great fish as bigge as a mans 
hand, and very good meate. The people of the countrey know them 
very well, and call them ambiziamatare, that is to say, the fish of the 
rocke. The shells of these fishes they use to burne, and they make 
very good lime to build withall. And being like the corke or barke of 
the tree, which is called manghi, they dresse their oxehides withall, 
to make their shooe soles the stronger.” {Purclias, vol. ii. p. 990.) 
The Mussel, spelt muscle and muskle, was sometimes 
called the Conche, or Echeola. Mussels were 
found in most of the large rivers and ponds in 1IusseL 
England. The pearl-producing property of these shells 
was well known. Antonie Parkhurst, in a letter to Eichard 
Hakluyt, mentions, among other commodities of New¬ 
foundland—■ 
“ oisters and muskles, in which I have found pearles, above 40 in 
one muskle, and generally all have some, great or small. I heard of 
•a Portugall that found one worth 300 duckets.” {Hahluyt, vol. iii. 
p. 171.) 
According to classical writers, pearls were formed by 
drops of rain falling into the shells of oysters or mussels; 
this notion long remained uncontradicted. Lawrens 
Andrews, in his Noble Lyfe, writes:— 
“ Echeola is a muskle in whose fysshe is a precious stone, and be 
