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 [pg 130]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.
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 Septem[pg 131]ber.[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 [pg 132]than when thus operated on by yourself, so that you do not ‘job’ the knife into your hand!”