“he could tell
At the first mouthful, if his oysters fed
On the Rutupian or the Lucrine bed
Or at Circeii.”[218]
The first artificial oyster-cultivator on a large scale appears to have been a certain Roman named Sergius Orata, who lived about a century B.C. His object, according to Pliny the elder,[219] was not to please his own appetite so much as to make money by ministering to the appetites of others. His vivaria were situated on the Lucrine Lake, near Baiae, and the Lucrine oysters obtained under his cultivation a notoriety which they never entirely lost, although British oysters eventually came to be more highly esteemed. He must have been a great enthusiast in his trade, for on one occasion when he became involved in a law-suit with one of the riparian proprietors, his counsel declared that Orata’s opponent made a great mistake if he expected to damp his ardour by expelling him from the lake, for, sooner than not grow oysters at all, he would grow them upon the roof of his house.[220] Orata’s successors in the business seem to have understood the secret of planting young oysters in new beds, for we are told that specimens brought from Brundisium and even from Britain were placed for a while in the Lucrine Lake, to fatten after their long journey, and also to acquire the esteemed “Lucrine flavour.”
Oysters are ‘in season’ whenever there is an ‘r’ in the month, in other words, from September to April. ‘Mensibus erratis,’ as the poet has it, ‘vos ostrea manducatis!’ It has been computed that the quantity annually produced in Great Britain amounts to no less than sixteen hundred million, while in America the number is estimated at five thousand five hundred million, the value being over thirteen million dollars, and the number of persons employed fifty thousand. Arcachon, one of the principal French oyster-parks, has nearly 10,000 acres of oyster beds, the annual value being from eight to ten million francs; in 1884–85, 178,359,000 oysters were exported from this place alone. In the season 1889–90, 50,000 tons of oysters were consumed in London.
Few will now be found to echo the poet Gay’s opinion:
“That man had sure a palate covered o’er
With brass or steel, that on the rocky shore
First broke the oozy oyster’s pearly coat,