the oyster, in zoology, a genus belonging to the order of vermes tellacea. The shell has two unequal valves; the cardo has no teeth, but a small hollowed it with transverse lateral streaks. There are 31 species, principally distinguished by peculiarities in their shells. The common oyster is reckoned an excellent food; and is eaten both raw, and variously prepared. Britain has been noted for oysters from the time of Juvenal, who, satyrizing an epicure, says,

*Circaeis nota forent, an* *Lucrinum ad Saxum, Rutopinovae edia fundo,* *Ostrea, calcebat primo depredare meru.* *He, whether Circe's rock his oysters bore,* *Or Lucrine lake, or distant Richborough's shore* *Knew at first taste.*

The luxurious Romans were very fond of this fish, and had their layers or stews for oysters as we have at present. Sergius Orata was the first inventor, as early as the time of L. Crassus the orator. He did not make them for the sake of indulging his appetite, but thro' avarice, and made great profits from them. Orata got great credit for his Lucrine oysters; for, says Pliny, the Britith were not then known.

The ancients eat them raw, and sometimes roasted. They had also a custom of stewing them with mallows and docks, or with fish, and esteemed them very nourishing.

Britain still keeps its superiority in oysters over other countries. Most of our coasts produce them naturally; and in such places they are taken by dredging, and are become an article of commerce, both raw and pickled. The very shells, calcined, become an useful medicine as an absorbent. In common with other shells, they prove an excellent manure.

Stews or layers of oysters are formed in places which nature never allotted as habitations for them. Those near Colchester have been long famous; at present there are others that at least rival the former, near the mouth of the Thames. The oysters, or their spat, are brought to convenient places, where they improve in taste and size. It is an error to suppose, that the fine green observed in oysters taken from artificial beds, is owing to copperas; it being notorious how destructive the substance or the solution of it is to all fish. We cannot give a better account of the cause, or of the whole treatment of oysters, than what is preserved in the learned bishop Sprat's history of the Royal Society, from p. 307, to 309.

"In the month of May, the oysters cast their spawn, (which the dredgers call their spat;) it is like to a drop of candle, and about the bigness of a half-penny.

"The spat cleaves to stones, old oyster-shells, pieces of wood, and such like things, at the bottom of the sea, which they call cultch.

"It is probably conjectured, that the spat in 24 hours begins to have a shell.

"In the month of May, the dredgers (by the law of the admiralty court) have liberty to catch all manner of oysters, of what size forever.

"When they have taken them, with a knife they gently raise the small brood from the cultch, and then they throw the cultch in again, to preserve the ground for the future, unless they be so newly spat, that they cannot be safely severed from the cultch; in that case they are permitted to take the stone or shell, &c. that the spat is upon, one shell having many times 20 spats.

"After the month of May, it is felony to carry away the cultch, and punishable to take any other oysters, unless it be those of size, (that is to say,) about the bigness of an half-crown piece, or when, the two shells being shut, a fair shilling will rattle between them.

"The places where these oysters are chiefly caught, are called the Pent-Burnham, Malden, and Colne-waters; the latter taking its name from the river of Colne, which passeth by Colne-Chester, gives the name to that town, and runs into a creek of the sea, at a place called the Hythe, being the suburbs of the town.

"This brood and other oysters, they carry to the creeks of the sea, at Bricket-Sea, Merly, Langno, Fingrego, Wivenho, Tollesbury, and Saltcoate, and there throw them into the channel, which they call their beds or layers, where they grow and fatten, and in two or three years the smallest brood will be oysters of the size aforesaid.

"Those oysters which they would have green, they put into pits about three feet deep in the salt-marshes, which are overflowed only at spring-tides, to which they have sluices, and let out the salt-water until it is about a foot and half deep.

"These pits, from some quality in the soil co-operating with the heat of the sun, will become green, and communicate their colour to the oysters that are put into them in four or five days, tho' they commonly let them continue there six weeks or two months, in which time they will be of a dark green.

"To prove that the sun operates in the greening, Tollesbury pits will green only in summer; but that the earth hath the greater power, Bricket-Sea pits green both winter and summer: and for a further proof, a pit within a foot of a greening-pit will not green; and those that did green very well, will in time lose their quality.

"The oysters, when the tide comes in, lie with their hollow shell downwards; and when it goes out, they turn on the other side: they remove not from their place, unless in cold weather, to cover themselves in the oufe.

"The reason of the scarcity of oysters, and consequently of their dearth, is, because they are of late years bought up by the Dutch.

"There are great penalties by the admiralty court, laid upon those that fish out of those grounds which the court appoints, or that destroy the cultch, or that take any oysters that are not of size, or that do not tread under their feet, or throw upon the shore, a fish which they call a five-finger, resembling a spur-rowel, because that fish gets into the oysters when they gape, and sucks them out.

"The reason that such a penalty is set upon any that shall destroy the cultch, is, because they find that if that be taken away, the oufe will increase, and the muscles and cockles will breed there, and destroy the oysters, they having not wherein to stick their spat.

"The oysters are sick after they have spat; but in June and July they begin to mend, and in August they are perfectly well: the male oyster is black-fick, having a black substance in the fin; the female white-fick (as they term it), having a milky substance in the fin. They are salt in the pits, salter in the layers, but falteft at sea."