Pvn H,i I'UitlS

OSTREA. 45
Britain famous as an oyster-store, and continue to give
to thousands and a delicate and wholesome
employment
food to millions. Although
Catullus calls the Helles-
pont "caeteris ostreosior oris/' his countrymen always
gave the preference to our natives. Some interesting
statistics of the trade will be found in the '
British
Mollusca.' In a later account of this important branch
of our commerce it is stated that in London alone about
700 millions of oysters are annually consumed, and that
in the provinces there is equal voracity and constant
crying out for more. The consumption in Paris in 1861
reached 132 millions, according to a statistical report
of the archostreologer, M. Coste. The preservation of
oyster-fisheries has been frequently the subject of legis-
lative enactments in this and other countries. A dispute,
which threatened at one time to be serious, arose not
many years ago between the French and ourselves as to
the limits of such fisheries in the English Channel. It
shows the weight that these humble mollusks, insulted
in proverbs, but sought after with such eagerness, have
in the scale of nations. The same jealousy prevailed
lately on the other side of the Atlantic. The Governor
of Virginia in 1857 was said to have been in a per-
petual stew on this account, and to have sent an urgent
" "
message or appeal to the Legislature for protection,
believing that the idea of an oysterless State was much too
gloomy for contemplation
boast that their oysters are far superior in flavour to
! Our Transatlantic cousins
any in the Old World. In the ' Natural History of
New York/ published in 1843,
it is stated that there
were two principal varieties in the then United States—
viz. northern and southern—and that connoisseurs pre-
tended to distinguish these varieties by the smell alone.
The oyster may have played, although unconsciously, a