THE OCEAN AND ITS LIVING WONDERS (_continued_).
The Madrepores—Brain, Mushroom, and Plantain Coral—The Beautiful
Sea‐anemones; their Organisation and Habits; their Insatiable
Voracity—The Gorgons—Echinodermata—The Star‐fish—Sea
Urchins—Wonderful Shell and Spines—An Urchin’s Prayer—The Sea
Cucumber—The Trepang, or Holothuria—Trepang Fishing—Dumont
d’Urville’s Description—The Commerce in this Edible—The
Molluscs—The Teredo, or Ship‐worm—Their Ravages on the Holland
Coast—The Retiring Razor‐fish—The Edible Mussel—History of their
Cultivation in France—The Bouchots—Occasional Danger of Eating
Mussels—The Prince of Bivalves—The Oyster and its
Organisation—Difference in Size—American Oysters—High Priced in
some Cities—Quantity Consumed in London—Courteous Exchange—Roman
Estimation of them—The “Breedy Creatures” brought from
Britain—Vitellius and his Hundred Dozen—A Sell: Poor Tyacke—The
First Man who Ate an Oyster—The Fisheries—Destructive
Dredging—Lake Fusaro and the Oyster Parks—Scientific Cultivation
in France—Success and Profits—The Whitstable and other Beds—System
pursued.
Among the interesting and comparatively familiar forms of ocean’s
treasures must be counted the Madrepores, often regarded as corals, but
quite distinct as a scientific group from the precious coral of commerce.
The Madreporidæ are very numerous, and are formed by colonies of polyps.
The poet has truly described them:—
“I saw the living pile ascend
The mausoleum of its architects,
Still dying upward as their labour closed:
Slime the material, but the slime was turned
To adamant by their petrific touch.”
The polyps of the madrepores resemble flowers when their upper disc is
expanded and their feelers are out in the water. When contracted, they are
concealed from sight in the calcareous cells, which have grown with
themselves, and form part of the madrepora. These beautiful and curious
natural productions assume many distinct forms. Some of them are
arborescent, as in _Stylaster flabelliformis_, which puts forth a perfect
forest of trunks and branches. Others are star‐like in shape; many are
more or less cylindrical and oval, as in the well‐known “Brain coral”
(_Meandrina cerebriformis_). Another genus is entitled _Fungia_, from a
supposed resemblance to the mushroom, there being this difference between
terrestrial and marine mushrooms—that the former have leaflets below, and
the latter have them above. One of the most pleasing forms is found in the
Plantain Madrepore, where the polyps are arranged in tufts.
[Illustration: MADREPORES.]
The Sea‐anemones (_Actinidæ_) will be now, thanks to the popularity of the
aquarium, tolerably familiar to most readers. Although undoubtedly animal,
they much more resemble flowers. They are to be found of the most
brilliant colours and graceful forms.
The body of the Sea‐anemone is “cylindrical in form, terminating beneath
in a muscular disc, which is generally large and distinct, enabling them
to cling vigorously to foreign bodies. It terminates above in an upper
disc, bearing many rows of tentacles, which differ from each other only in
their size. These tentacles are sometimes decorated with brilliant
colours, forming a species of collar, consisting of contractile and
sometimes retractile tubes, pierced at their points with an orifice,
whence issue jets of water, which are ejected at the will of the animal.
Arranged in circles, they are distributed with perfect regularity round a
central mouth. These are their arms.” The stomach of the sea‐anemone is
both the seat of digestion and of reproduction. The young are actually
ejected from the mouth with the rejecta of their food. “The daisy‐like
anemones in the Zoological Gardens of Paris,” Frédol tells us, “frequently
throw up young ones, which are dispersed, and attach themselves to various
parts of the aquarium, and finally become miniature anemones exactly like
the parent. An actinia, which had taken a very copious repast, ejected a
portion of it about twenty‐four hours later, and in the middle of the
ejected food were found thirty‐eight young individuals.” According to one
author, an accouchement is here a fit of indigestion! Sea‐anemones may be
mutilated, cut limb from limb, or torn to pieces, and each piece will
become a new anemone in the end. “They adhere,” says Dr. Johnson, “to
rocks, shells, and other extraneous bodies by means of a glutinous
secretion from their enlarged base, but they can leave their hold and
remove to another station whensoever it pleases them, either by gliding
along with a slow and almost imperceptible movement (half an inch in five
minutes), as is their usual method, or by reversing the body and using the
tentacula for the purpose of feet, as Reaumur asserts, and as I have once
witnessed; or, lastly, inflating the body with water, so as to render it
more buoyant, they detach themselves, and are driven to a distance by the
random motion of the waves. They feed on shrimps, small crabs, whelks, and
on very many species of shelled mollusca, and probably on all animals
brought within their reach whose strength or agility is insufficient to
extricate them from the grasp of their numerous tentacula.... The size of
the prey is frequently in unseemly disproportion to the preyer, being
often equal in bulk to itself. I had once brought me a specimen of
_Actinia crassicornis_ that might have been originally two inches in
diameter, which had somehow contrived to swallow a valve of _Pecten
maximus_ of the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the
stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so that
the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a
pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and
the mouth was, of course, prevented; yet, instead of emaciating and dying
of atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a
very untoward accident to increase its enjoyment and its chance of double
fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was
opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach; the
individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese Twin, but with greater
intimacy and extent in its unions.” The Actinia are at once gluttonous and
voracious. They seize even mussels and crabs, and when they want to eject
the hardest parts of the latter can turn their stomachs inside out, as one
might turn out one’s pocket! Their tentacles can act on the offensive; the
hand of the man who has touched them becomes inflamed, and small fish are
literally killed by contact with them.
In Provence, Italy, and Greece, some varieties are used for food, the
Green Actinia being in special repute.
[Illustration: SEA‐ANEMONES.
1. _Actinoloba dianthus_. 2. _Cereus gemmaceus_. 3. _Actinia bicolor_. 4.
_Sagartia viduata_. 5. _Cereus papillossus_. 6. _Actinia picta_. 7.
_Actinia equina_. 8. _Sagartia rosea_. 9. _Sagartia coccinea_.]
The Gorgons are interesting curiosities of the coral type; some are
scarcely the twelfth of an inch in height, while others attain a height of
several feet. The beautiful Fan Gorgon, which is often eighteen or more
inches high, is so called on account of its form, and there are other very
beautiful examples of arborescent gorgons. Their organism is double; the
one external, sometimes gelatinous; sometimes, on the contrary, fleshy and
cretaceous. It is animated with life.
A vast natural group is that of the _Echinodermata_, which includes five
orders, or families, embracing among them the star‐fish, the sea‐eggs, or
sea‐urchins, and the sea‐cucumbers, or “sea‐slugs” (Holothurias), the
latter of which are important items in the food of many Asiatics. The
generic term Echinodermata signifies an animal bristling with spines, but
the group includes many to whom it could not be applied.
The Star‐fish (_Asterias_) is met in almost every sea, and in all
latitudes, although more richly varied in tropical seas. They vary in
colour from a yellowish‐grey to orange, red, or violet. The body of the
asterias is a most curious organisation, having sometimes as many as
11,000 juxta‐imposed pieces, while it possesses spines and tubercles.
Observe one stranded on the shore, and it may appear destitute of
locomotive powers. But this is not so, for they can slowly creep over
small spaces, and even up the vertical sides of rocks. Frédol says:—“If an
asterias is turned upon its back, it will at first remain immovable, with
its feet shut up. Soon, however, out come the feet like so many little
feelers; it moves them backward and forward, as if feeling for the ground;
it soon inclines them towards the bottom of the vase, and fixes them one
after the other. When it has a sufficient number attached, the animal
turns itself round. It is not impossible, whilst walking on the sea‐shore,
to have the pleasure of seeing one of these star‐fishes walking upon the
sand,” although they are very commonly left dead there.
The star‐fish’s mouth is on its lower side, and almost directly abuts on
its stomach. It is a voracious feeder, and will even attack molluscs.
Formerly it was believed that the animal would open an oyster with one of
its rays, or legs, but this was unlikely, as the oyster might be likely
enough to have the best of it in such a case by shutting his shells on the
intruder. It is now pretty well understood that it injects an acrid poison
into the oyster’s shell, which obliges it to open.
[Illustration: STAR‐FISH.]
The “Urchins” seem to owe their name to Aristotle, and their spiny
covering and armature have in all ages attracted the attention of
naturalists. Some of them have 3,000 or 4,000 prickles, and their
organisation is really wonderful. They are enclosed in a globular hollow
box, which grows with their growth. Gosse explains how. The box can never
be cast off, and it is obvious that the deposits made from inside would
only narrow the space, which really requires to be enlarged. “The growing
animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food.
Its cry is ‘Give me space! a larger house, or I die!’ How is this problem
solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of the
Creator has a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made
in one piece, nor in ten, nor a hundred. Six hundred distinct pieces go to
make up the hollow case, all accurately fitted together, so that the
perfect symmetry of outline remains unbroken; and yet, thin as their
substance is, they retain their relative positions with unchanging
exactness, and the slight brittle box retains all requisite strength and
firmness, for each of these pieces is enveloped by a layer of living
flesh; a vascular tissue passes up between the joints, where one meets
another, and spreads itself over the whole exterior surface.” Their spines
are instruments of defence and of locomotion; each has several muscles to
work it.
The poet‐scientist, Michelet, has beautifully painted the animal’s nature,
and makes it describe itself as follows. “I am born,” says the unobtrusive
Echinoderm, “without ambition; I ask for none of the brilliant gifts
possessed by those gentlemen the molluscs. I would neither make mother‐of‐
pearl nor pearls; I have no wish for brilliant colours, a luxury which
would point me out; still less do I desire the grace of your giddy
medusas, the waving charm of whose flaming locks attracts observation and
exposes one to shipwreck. Oh, mother! I wish for one thing only, _to
be_—to be without these exterior and compromising appendages; to be
thickset, strong, and round, for that is the shape in which I should be
the least exposed; in short, to be a centralised being. I have very little
instinct for travel. To roll sometimes from the surface to the bottom of
the sea is enough of travel for me. Glued firmly to my rock, I could there
solve the problem, the solution of which your favourite, man, seeks for in
vain—that of safety. To strictly exclude enemies and admit all friends,
especially water, air, and light, would, I know, cost me some labour and
constant effort. Covered with movable spines, enemies will avoid me. Now,
bristling like a bear, they call me an urchin.”(34)
[Illustration: URCHINS IN A ROCK.]
The term “sea‐cucumber” accurately describes the shape of the Holothuria,
which is in general terms a worm‐like cylinder, varying as much as from an
inch or two to thirty, and, in exceptional cases, forty inches in length.
The skin of the animal is usually thick and leathery; it is crowned by a
mouth with a fringe of tentacula, which expand like a flower when it is
unmolested. They particularly avoid the glare of light. One large eatable
species is common in the Mediterranean, and is used for food in Naples and
elsewhere. But it is in the Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seas that the
_Holothuria edulis_, known there as the _trepang_, is an important adjunct
to the food of the natives. Thousands of junks are employed in the trepang
fisheries. The Malay fisherman will harpoon them with a long bamboo
terminating in a sharp hook at a distance of thirty yards. In four or five
fathoms of water native divers are employed, who seize them in their
hands, and will bring up several at a time. They are then boiled, and
flattened with stones; after which process they are spread out on bamboo
mats to dry, first in the sun and afterwards by smoking. They are then put
in sacks and shipped principally to Chinese ports, where they are
considered a luxury.
The great French navigator, Dumont d’Urville, witnessed the processes
employed while in Raffles Bay. An hour after the arrival of four prows all
the men were at work ashore cooking them in boilers placed over roughly‐
constructed stone furnaces, after which they were dried on hurdled roofs.
Captain d’Urville went on board one of the Malay vessels, where he was
received with cordiality by the padrone, or captain. “He,” says that
navigator, “showed us over his little ship. The keel appeared to us
sufficiently solid; even the lines did not want elegance; but great
disorder seemed to reign in the stowage department. From a kind of bridge,
formed by hurdles of bamboos and junk, we saw the cabin, which looked like
a poultry house: bags of rice, packets and boxes were huddled together.
Below was the store of water, of cured trepang, and the sailors’ berths.
Each boat was furnished with two rudders, one at each end, which lifted
itself when the boat touched the bottom. The craft was furnished with two
masts, without shrouds, which could be lowered on to the bridge at will by
means of a hinge; they carry the ordinary sail; the anchors are of wood,
for iron is rarely used by the Malays; their cables are made of rattan
fibre; the crew of each bark consists of about thirty‐seven, each shore
boat having a crew of six men. At the moment of our visit they were all
occupied in fishing operations, some of them being anchored very near to
us. Seven or eight of their number, nearly naked, were diving for trepang;
the padrone alone was unoccupied. An ardent sun darted its rays upon their
heads without appearing to incommode them, an exposure which no European
could hold up under. It was near mid‐day, and the moment, as our Malay
captain assured us, most favourable for the fishing. In fact, we saw that
each diver returned to the surface with at least one animal, and sometimes
two, in his hands. It appears that the higher the sun is above the
horizon, the more easily is the creature distinguished at the bottom. The
divers were so rapid in their movements that they scarcely touched the
boat, into which they threw the animals before they dived again. When the
boat was filled with them, it proceeded to the shore, and its place was
supplied by an empty one.” The Holothuria taken there were five to six
inches long. D’Urville tasted it when prepared, and says that it resembled
lobster. His men, however, took more kindly to it than did he.
[Illustration: SEA‐CUCUMBER (_Holothuria tubulosa_).]
We must now examine a most important class of pulpy animals, the Mollusca,
of which the bivalve molluscs are by far the most important to man. In
consequence of their very softness and delicacy, Nature has provided them
with a shell coat of calcareous mail.
The sub‐class _Acephala_, are as their names indicate, _headless_
molluscs, and though sometimes _partially_ naked, are usually very well
protected by shells. When it is known that there are over 4,000 species of
bivalve molluscs, the impossibility of describing more than a few typical
and prominent examples will be seen.
The genus _Teredo_ consists of marine worm‐like animals having a special
and irresistible inclination for boring wood, whatever its hardness. Ships
have been thus silently and secretly undermined, till the planks have been
either like sponges or have crumbled into dust under the very feet of
their crews. The holes bored by these imperceptible miners riddle the
entire interior of a piece of wood, without any external indication of
their ravages. Piles and piers have been utterly ruined, and vessels have
sometimes gone to the bottom through them. At the beginning of the last
century half the coast of Holland was threatened with inundation and
practical annihilation because the piles which support its dykes were
attacked by the teredo, and hundreds of thousands of pounds damage was
done by this wretched worm. It has been now discovered that the worm has a
great antipathy to oxide of iron, and wood impregnated with it is secure
from its ravages. Other animals of the same group are capable of boring
even rock.
Another important bivalve is the well known Solen or “razor‐fish,”
varieties of which are common all over the globe. “These molluscs,” says
Figuier, “live with their shells buried vertically in the sand, a short
distance from the shore; the hole which they have hollowed, and which they
never quit, sometimes attains as much as two yards in depth; by means of
their foot, which is large, conical, swollen in the middle and pointed at
its extremity, they raise themselves with great agility to the entrance of
their burrow. They bury themselves rapidly, and disappear on the slightest
approach of danger.
“When the sea retires, the presence of the Solen is indicated by a small
orifice in the sand, whence escape at intervals bubbles of air. In order
to attract them to the surface, the fishermen throw into the hole a pinch
of salt; the sand immediately becomes stirred, and the animal presents
itself just above the point of its shell. It must be seized at once, for
it disappears again very quickly, and no renewed efforts will bring it to
the surface a second time. Its retreat is commonly cut short by a knife
being passed below it; for it burrows into the ground with such velocity
that it is difficult to capture it with the hand alone. The fish itself is
a kind of marine worm.”
[Illustration: THE RAZOR FISH (_Solen ensis_).]
But of the Acephalous Mollusca none are more important to man than the
mussel and oyster, the pearl‐bearing varieties of which latter have been
already considered. Both are familiar to every reader.
The _Mytilus edulis_, the edible mussel of commerce, the “poor man’s
oyster,” is provided with a byssus, a bundle of hairs or threads, by which
it can anchor to the rock. In its natural state it is much less fitted for
human food than when cultivated. Their civilisation, as it might be
termed, dates back to the year 1236, when the master of a barque, an
Irishman named Walton, was wrecked in the bay or creek of Aiguillon, a few
miles distant from Rochelle. The exile at first supported himself by
hunting sea‐fowl in the neighbouring marshes, where he also soon began,
being an observant man, to notice certain peculiarities of mussel life.
[Illustration: THE MUSSEL (_Mytilus edulis_).]
Walton remarked that many of the mussels attached themselves by preference
to that part of posts or stones a little _above_ the mud of the marshes,
and that those so situated soon became plumper and fatter, and more
suitable for edible purposes, than those buried _in_ the mud. He soon saw
the possibilities of a new branch of industry. “The practices he
introduced,” wrote a distinguished French writer, long ago, “were so
happily adapted to the requirements of the new industry, that, after six
centuries, they are still the rules by which the rich patrimony he created
for a numerous population is governed.” He placed long rows of twelve‐foot
posts, about six feet high out of the watery mud, and a yard apart, each
pair of which always formed a letter V; in other words, a number of them
radiated from a common centre. The posts were interlaced with a basket‐
work of branches, so as to form continuous hurdles; these are now termed
_bouchots_. He also had isolated posts, and one of his great ideas was, as
in oyster culture to‐day, to arrest the spat, which would otherwise have
washed away to sea with the tide, and been lost. “At the present time
these lines of hurdles form a perfect little forest at Aiguillon; there
are about a quarter of a million piles alone. In July the _bouchotiers_,
as the men employed in this culture are termed, launch their punts, and
proceeding to the marshes, detach with a hook the thickly agglomerated
masses of young mussels from the piles, which they gather in baskets and
take to the bouchots, which form a perfect hedge of fascines and branches,
of different heights. Each stage receives the mollusc suitable to it. In
the first stage of its existence the mussel cannot endure exposure to the
air, and remains constantly under water, except at the period of spring
tides. These are gathered in sacks made of old matting, or suspended in
interstices of the basket‐work. The mussels are advanced stage after stage
until they reach the highest bouchots, which remain out of water at all
tides.” The whole bay yielded close on half a million pounds sterling some
years ago.
“While,” says Figuier, “commending the mussel as an important article of
food, we must not conceal the fact that it has produced in certain persons
very grave effects, showing that for them its flesh has the effects of
poison. The symptoms, commonly observed two or three hours after the
repast, are weakness or torpor, constriction of the throat and swelling of
the head, accompanied by great thirst, nausea, frequent vomitings, and
eruptions of the skin and severe itching.
“The cause of these attacks is not very well ascertained; they have in
turn been ascribed to the presence of the coppery pyrites in the
neighbourhood of the mussel; to certain small crabs which lodge themselves
as parasites in the shell of the mussel; to the spawn of star‐fish or
medusæ that the mussel may have swallowed. But, probably the true cause of
this kind of poisoning is found in the predisposition of individuals. The
remedy is very simple; an emetic, accompanied by drinking plentifully of
slightly acidulated beverage.” They are eaten very freely in most parts of
the seaboard of the United States, and the present writer has eaten them
constantly, boiled, stewed with tomatoes, &c., and in soup, without the
slightest bad effects.
[Illustration: ISOLATED PILES COVERED WITH THE SPAWN OF MUSSELS.]
_The_ bivalve _par excellence_ must always be _Ostrea edulis_, the common
oyster. This mollusc, which some might be inclined to place low in the
scale of nature, has really a complex and delicate organisation. It has a
mouth, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines; its blood is colourless, but
it has a true circulation; and it breathes under water, as do fishes.
“Having no head,” says Figuier, “the oyster can have no brain; the nerves
originate near the mouth, where a great ganglion is visible, whence issue
a pair of nerves which distribute themselves in the regions of the stomach
and liver, terminating in a second ganglion, situated behind the liver.
The first nervous branch distributes its sensibility to the mouth and
tentacles; the second, to the respiratory branchiæ. With organs of the
senses oysters are unprovided. Condemned to a sedentary life, riveted to a
rock, where they have been rooted, as it were, in their infancy, they
neither see nor hear; touch appears to be their only sense, and that is
placed in the labial tentacles of the mouth.” The oyster may carry
hundreds of thousands of eggs—some say as many as 2,000,000; it ejects
them after a process of incubation. Nothing is more curious than to
witness a bank of oysters in the spawning season, which is usually from
the month of June to the end of September.(35) Every adult—for the oyster
is sexless—throws forth a living dust, a perfect cloud of embryotic life.
The spat is soon scattered far and wide, and unless the young oyster
attach itself to some solid body, it falls a victim to other marine
animals. Microscopic in size when it leaves the parent, it is at the end
of a month about the size of a large pea; in a year it may be an inch and
a half in diameter; in three it is getting on to a quite respectable size,
and after a short course in the oyster park it is ready for the table.(36)
Oysters are of all sizes, and there are some so large that they require to
be carved. In New York, the paradise of oyster‐eaters, they range from the
size of a half‐crown to five or six inches long. The shores of Long
Island, a distance round of 115 miles, are one continuous oyster‐field,
while the one State of Virginia is said to possess nearly 2,000,000 acres
of oyster‐beds. The Americans are great lovers of the bivalve, which is
probably one of the most wholesome forms of _easy_ nourishment which can
possibly be taken. In a stew with milk, and a little oatmeal, or as soup,
they are especially good for invalids, and when one can take nothing else,
he can usually relish oysters. And, as all gastronomers know, they rather
increase than diminish appetite; hence the modern French practice of
taking half a dozen _before_ the soup is served. “There is no alimentary
substance,” says a French writer, “not even excepting bread, which does
not produce indigestion under given circumstances; but oysters never....
We may eat them to‐day, to‐morrow, eat them always and in profusion,
without fear of indigestion.” The few who cannot eat them, and there _are_
such, are really to be commiserated. How highly they are esteemed in some
countries is shown by the fact that some years ago they cost in St.
Petersburg a paper rouble, or about a shilling _each_; in Stockholm,
fivepence each. In England only two or three years ago they had risen to
nearly four‐fifths of the latter price; but now, thanks to the extensive
cultivation, and to the importation of excellent American oysters on a
large scale, they are within the reach of all.
Of the quantity of oysters consumed in London alone who can give even an
approximate guess? Fancy, if you can, also, that curiously courteous
exchange which goes on every Christmas between our oyster‐eating country
cousins and our turkey and goose loving Londoners. The turkey, the brace
of pheasants or hares, has arrived. “Such a present,” says the author of
“The Oyster,” “is promptly repaid by a fine cod packed in ice, and two
barrels of oysters. How sweet are these when eaten at a country home, and
opened by yourselves, the barrel being paraded on the table with its head
knocked out, and with the whitest of napkins round it. * * * How sweet it
is, too, to open some of the dear natives for your pretty cousin, and to
see her open her sweet little mouth about as wide as Lesbia’s sparrow did
for his lump of—not sugar, it was not then invented—but lump of honey! How
sweet it is, after the young lady has swallowed her half‐dozen, to help
yourself! The oyster never tastes sweeter than when thus operated on by
yourself, so that you do not ‘job’ the knife into your hand!”
The Greeks have not said much in praise of oysters, but then they regarded
Britain much as we now do Greenland. The Romans, however, highly
appreciated them. Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny,
have all enlarged upon the various qualities of the oyster; and it was to
Sergius Orata that we owe the introduction of oyster‐beds, for he it was
that invented the layers or stews for oysters at Baia. “That was in the
days when luxury was rampant, and when men of great wealth, like Licinius
Crassus, the leviathan slave‐merchant, rose to the highest honours; for
this dealer in human flesh in the boasted land of liberty served the
office of consul along with Pompey the Great, and on one occasion required
no less than 10,000 tables to accommodate all his guests. How many barrels
of oysters were eaten at that celebrated dinner, the ‘Ephemerides’—as
Plutarch calls _The Times_ and _Morning Post_ of that day—have omitted to
state; but as oysters then took the place that turtle soup now does at our
great City feeds, imagination may busy itself as it likes with the
calculation. All we know is, that oysters then fetched very long prices at
Rome, as the author of the ‘Tabella Ciberia’ has not failed to tell us;
and then, as now, the high price of any luxury of the table was sure to
make a liberal supply of it necessary when a man like Crassus entertained
half the city as his guests, to rivet his popularity.
“But the Romans had a weakness for the ‘breedy creatures’ as our dear old
friend Christopher North calls them in his inimitable ‘Noctes.’ In the
time of Nero, some sixty years later, the consumption of oysters in the
‘Imperial City’ was nearly as great as it now is in the ‘World’s
Metropolis;’ and there is a statement, which I remember to have read
somewhere, that during the reign of Domitian, the last of the twelve
Cæsars, a greater number of millions of bushels were annually consumed at
Rome than I should care to swear to. These oysters, however, were but
Mediterranean produce—the small fry of Circe, and the smaller Lucrinians;
and this unreasonable demand upon them quite exhausted the beds in that
great fly‐catcher’s reign; and it was not till under the wise
administration of Agricola in Britain, when the Romans got their far‐famed
Rutupians from the shores of Kent, from Richborough, and the Reculvers—the
_Rutupi Portus_ of the ‘Itinerary’ of which the latter, the Regulbium,
near Whitstable, in the mouth of the Thames, was the northern
boundary–that Juvenal praised them as he does; and he was right; for in
the whole world there are no oysters like them; and of all the ‘breedy
creatures’ that glide, or have ever glided, down the throats of the human
race, our ‘natives’ are probably the most delectable.” The Roman emperors
later on never failed to have British oysters at their banquets.
Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have
got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of
poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he
notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the
gourmet who at the first _bite_(37) was able to tell whence the particular
breed came.
“When I but see the oyster’s shell,
I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mud
Where it was raised.”
The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is
brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater,
can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and
Colchester “natives,” Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin
her Carlingfords and “Powldoodies of Burran.”
[Illustration: OYSTERS (_Ostrea edulis_).
A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months; B, five or six months; C, three or
four months; D, one to two months; and E, twenty days after birth.]
“There is one little spot,” says the author of the entertaining but
veracious little work quoted before, “on the shores of Cornwall which I
cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of
the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply.
Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of
Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and
in the estuary of that little river, a person of the name of Tyacke,
within the memory of the ‘oldest inhabitant,’ rented certain oyster‐beds,
famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said,
the Phœnicians, ‘a long time ago,’ had discovered to be infinitely
preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters
are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke
loaded a fishing‐smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted
along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found
himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster‐dredger
think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came
to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which
travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they
are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long
and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his
boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached
the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them.
This was granted, and after a few days the spores of _ulva latissima_ and
_enteromorpha_, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there
abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green
and fat, and in the finest condition for re‐shipment. Four days, it is
said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and
plump; and Tyacke, joyful at the improvement which he daily witnessed, let
his stock feed on for a week. It was towards evening that he bethought
himself, as the tide was out, that if he meant to reach Billingsgate by
the next morning it would be wise to re‐ship his oysters before turning in
for the night. The boat was lowered; but, as he attempted to land, he was
warned off by the owner of the soil, who stood there with several fierce‐
looking fellows, armed with cutlasses and fowling‐pieces, evidently
anticipating the Cornishman’s intention, and determined to frustrate it at
all hazards.
“‘What do you want here?’ he asked of Tyacke.
“‘The oysters I put down to feed,’ was the reply; ‘they were placed there
by your permission, and now I am anxious to re‐ship them, to be in time
for to‐morrow’s market.’
“‘True,’ replied the Kentishman, ‘I gave you leave to lay down the oysters
and feed them, but not a word was said about re‐shipping them. Where they
are, there they stay; and if you persist in trespassing, I shall know what
to do.’
“Poor Tyacke found himself much in the predicament of many a flat who has
been picked up by a sharp. A century ago law was not justice, nor justice
law. Perhaps it may not be so even now, and the story of the lawyer who
ate the oyster in dispute, and gave each of the disputants a shell, may
hold as good in our day as it did in that when the author of the ‘Beggars’
Opera’ put it into verse.”
It is said that the oyster, a delicate, refined animal, is particularly
fond of music. One of the oyster’s historians says that an old ballad is
still sung by many a hardy seaman as he trolls his dredging nets:—
“The herring loves the merry moonlight,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredger’s song,
For he comes of a gentle kind.”
Shakspere, it may be remembered, alludes to “an oyster crossed in love.”
Raised out of his native waters, the oyster makes the voyage to the first
station in his destined travels in company with his kind, and if it
occupies a long time, is attentively supplied with refreshing sea‐water.
If taken proper care of, he arrives at the wharf as lively as when first
taken from his native element. Witness the excellent American “Blue
Points,” now commonly sold in England. Arrived in port, the oyster too
often, however, first becomes sensible of the miseries of slavery, for
here he is shovelled into carts and barrows, and tumbled into sacks, and
he may consider himself greatly fortunate if he gets a drink of salted,
not sea, water.
An old adage tells us that “He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.”
Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made. “Once upon a time a man
of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and
listening to the murmur of the ‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would
say, of ‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster‐
shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so
unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the
mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain,
gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more
closely. Seeing the beautiful cream‐coloured layers that shone within the
shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably
curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged ‘native’ for further
examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate
mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult,
snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him
considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive
gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth. ‘Delightful!’ he exclaimed,
opening wide his eyes; ‘what is this?’ and again he sucked his finger.
Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new
pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable
delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he
opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the
mollusc itself. ‘Delicious!’ he exclaimed; and there and then, with no
other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we
now take it, of ‘foaming brown stout’ or ‘pale Chablis’ to wash it
down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless
man indulge in the first oyster‐banquet!”(38)
The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters
may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must
take them _au naturel_. In Wilson’s “Noctes Ambrosianæ” we find the
following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet
till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae
the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain
liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am
beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and
then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’
vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the
brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the
eatin’ of eisters.”
Oyster‐fishing is pursued in many different ways in different countries.
Round Minorca, divers descend, hammer in hand, and bring up as many as
they can carry. On the English and French coasts a most destructive
process is employed; a dredge‐net, heavily weighted with an iron frame, is
thrown overboard; it tears off a number of the precious bivalves from the
bottom, and leaves a larger number buried in the mud. “In France,” says
Figuier, “oyster‐dredging is conducted by fleets of thirty or forty boats,
each carrying four or five men. At a fixed hour, and under the
surveillance of a coastguard in a pinnace bearing the national flag, the
flotilla commences the fishing. In the estuary of the Thames the practice
is much the same, although no official surveillance is observed. Each bark
is provided with four or five dredges, each resembling in shape a common
clasp purse. These dredges are formed of network, with a strong iron
frame, the iron frame serving the double purpose of acting as a scraper
and keeping the mouth open, while giving a proper pressure as it travels
over the oyster‐beds.... The tension of the rope is the signal for hauling
in, and very heterogeneous are the contents of the dredge—seaweeds, star‐
fishes, lobsters, crabs, actinia, and stones. In this manner the common
oyster‐beds on both sides of the Channel were ploughed up by the oyster‐
dredger pretty much as the ploughman on shore turns up a field.” The
consequence was that the fields became nearly exhausted. This led to the
scientific cultivation now in vogue, which has proved most thoroughly
successful in a commercial point of view.
In Italy, the Neapolitan Lake Fusaro—the Acheron of so many of the
classical poets—is a great oyster‐park, dating from the days of the
Romans. It is a salt, marshy pond, shaded by magnificent trees; its
greatest depth is nowhere more than six feet; its bottom is black, the mud
being of volcanic origin. The general idea involved in the oyster
cultivation there is the protection of the embryo oyster. The fishermen of
Lake Fusaro warehouse, as it were, in protected spots, the oysters ready
to discharge the spawn or spat. Upon the bottom of the lake, and all
around it, there are round pyramidal heaps of stones and artificial
rockeries, surrounded by piles. Other piles have lines suspended from one
to the other, each cord bearing a faggot or faggots of young branches and
twigs. In the spawning season the young fry, issuing from the parents on
the stones or rocks, are arrested by these means. They have, as it were, a
resting‐place provided for them on the piles and faggots.
The system pursued in France is that introduced by M. Coste, and founded
on his study of the Fusaro park. In 1858 he reported to the Emperor that
of twenty‐three oyster‐beds which had once existed at Rochelle, Marennes,
Rochefort, the Isles of Ré and Oleron, only five were left, and that at
other places formerly famed for oysters a similar mournful statement must
be made. “The impulse given by this report has been productive of the most
satisfactory results in France. All along the coast the maritime
populations are now actively engaged in oyster culture. Oyster‐parks, in
imitation of those at Fusaro, have sprung up. In his appeal to the
Emperor, M. Coste suggested that the State, through the Administration of
Marine, and by means of the vessels at its command, should take steps for
sowing the whole French coast in such a manner as to re‐establish the
oyster‐banks now in ruins, extend those which were prosperous, and create
others anew wherever the nature of the bottom would permit. The first
serious attempt to carry out the views of the distinguished Academician
were made in the Bay of St. Brieuc. In the month of April in the same year
in which his report was received operations commenced by planting
3,000,000 mother‐oysters which had been dredged in the common ground;
brood from the oyster‐grounds at Cancale and Tréquiers being distributed
in ten longitudinal lines on tiles, fragments of pottery, and valves of
shells. At the end of eight months the progress of the beds was tested,
and the dredge in a few minutes brought up 2,000 oysters fit for the
table, while two fascines, drawn up at random, contained nearly 20,000,
from one to two inches in diameter.” The publicity given to these facts
excited great and practical interest, and in a short time the culture
assumed gigantic proportions. The Bay of Arcachon was transformed into a
vast field of production, no less than 1,200 capitalists, mostly very
small ones, associated with an equal number of fishermen, having up to
1870 planted no less than 988 acres of oysters. In this way the State
organised two model farms for experimental purposes, at the trifling
original cost of £114; it was estimated to be worth £8,000 in 1870, and
had 5,000,000 oysters, large and small. 1,200 parks were then in active
operations on the Isle of Ré, and 2,000 more in course of construction.
[Illustration: DREDGING FOR OYSTERS.]
In our own country the Whitstable Company has been most successful. “The
layings at Whitstable,” Mr. Bertram tells us, “occupy about a mile and a
half square, and the oyster‐beds have been so prosperous as to have
obtained the name of the ‘happy fishing grounds.’ Whitstable lies in a
sandy bay formed by a small branch of the Medway, which separates the Isle
of Sheppey from the mainland. Throughout this bay, from the town of
Whitstable at its eastern extremity to the old town of Faversham, which
lies several miles inland, the whole of the estuary is occupied by oyster‐
farms, on which the maritime population, to the extent of 3,000 people and
upwards, is occupied, the sum paid for labour by the various companies
being set down at £160,000 per annum, besides the employment given at
Whitstable in building and repairing boats, dredges, and other requisites
for the oyster‐fishing. The business of the various companies is to feed
oysters for the London and other markets, to protect the spawn or flotsam,
as the dredgers call it, which is emitted on their own beds, and to
furnish, by purchase or otherwise, the new brood necessary to supply the
beds which have been taken up for consumption.” The little Bay of Pont, on
the Essex coast, a piece of water sixteen miles long by three wide, now
gives employment to 150 or more boats, the crews of which are exclusively
employed in obtaining brood oysters from eighteen months to two years old
to supply the oyster farmers.
The Thames, or “native” system, is as follows:—Every year there is a
regular examination of the beds, which are so carefully dredged that
almost every individual oyster is examined. The younger ones are placed
where they can thrive best, the same being true of all grades. Dead and
sickly oysters are removed, and star‐fish and all kinds of enemies killed.
[Illustration: THE SCALLOP (_Pecten_).]
The Scallop (_Pecten_) is not a true oyster, though it may be cooked and
treated like one, with satisfactory results. Its name is derived from the
channeled edges and surfaces peculiar to it, which somewhat resemble the
arrangements of the teeth of a comb. Centuries ago they were known as
Pilgrims’ Shells; for in the middle ages the pilgrims were wont to
ornament their habits or hats with these bivalves, of which there are not
far from a couple of hundred known species. They are much more lively
animals than the oyster, being able to shift about from place to place
with some degree of agility; this they do by forcibly ejecting water
between their shells, moving on by a kind of recoil. Another curious
bivalve mollusc is the _Spondylus_, a genus found mostly in the warmer
seas, some of the species of which are highly prized by conchologists.
Their strong, brilliantly‐coloured shells bristle with spines and feet.
One of the most remarkable species is that known to naturalists as
_Spondylus regius_, at all times scarce, and at one time extremely rare.
In connection with the last‐named mollusc, a story is told by M. Chenu,
regarding an enthusiastic collector. “M. R——,” says Chenu, “was Professor
of Botany to the Faculty of Paris, and was, as sometimes happens, more
learned than rich; he wished, on the invitation of a stranger, to purchase
one of these shells at a very high price, which might be from 3,000 to
6,000 francs (approximately £120 to £240); the bargain was made, and the
price agreed upon; it was only necessary to pay. The money in the
Professor’s hands made only a part of the sum the merchant was to receive
for his shell, and he would not part with it without payment. M. R——, now
consulting his desire to possess the shell more than his weak resources,
made up secretly a parcel of his scanty plate, and went out to sell it.
Without consulting his wife, he replaced his silver plate by articles of
tin, and ran to the merchant to secure his coveted Spondylus, which he
believed to be _S. regius_.
[Illustration: SPONDYLUS.]
“The hour of dinner arrived, and we may imagine the astonishment of Madame
R——, who could not comprehend the strange metamorphosis of her plate. She
delivered herself of a thousand painful conjectures on the subject. M.
R——, on his part, returned home happy with his shell, which he had
committed to the safe custody of a box placed in his coat pocket. But as
he approached the house he paused, and began for the first time to think
of the reception he might meet with. The reproaches which awaited him,
however, were compensated when he thought of the treasure he carried home.
Finally, he reached home, and Madame R——’s wrath was worthy of the
occasion; the poor man was overwhelmed with the grief he had caused his
wife; his courage altogether forsook him. He forgot his shell, and in his
trepidation, seated himself on a chair without the necessary adjustment of
his garment. He was only reminded of his treasure by hearing the crushing
sound of the breaking box which contained it. Fortunately the damage done
was not very great—two spines only of the shell were broken; but the good
man’s grief made so great an impression on Madame R——, that she no longer
thought of her own loss, but directed all her efforts to console the
simple‐minded philosopher.”
It may be added that these curious bivalve molluscs are very commonly
associated with branches of coral, to which they adhere firmly.