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 [pg 136]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 [pg 137]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.
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.’ [pg 138]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.