Nearly all the oyster shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate from the oysters having been formerly planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of blackfish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like, but the most common account of the matter is,—and I find that a similar superstition with regard to the disappearance of fishes exists almost everywhere,—that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the neighboring towns about the right to gather them, yellow specks appeared in them, and Providence caused them to disappear. A few years ago sixty thousand bushels were annually brought from the South and planted in the harbor of Wellfleet till they attained “the proper relish of Billingsgate”; but now they are imported commonly full-grown, and laid down near their markets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water, being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them better. The business was said to be still good and improving. The old man said that the oysters were liable to freeze in the winter, if planted too high; but if it were not “so cold as to strain their eyes” they were not injured. The inhabitants of New Brunswick have noticed that “ice will not form over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very intense indeed, and when the bays are frozen over the oyster-beds are easily discovered by the water above them remaining unfrozen, or as the French residents say, _degèle_.” Our host said that they kept them in cellars all winter. “Without anything to eat or drink?” I asked. “Without anything to eat or drink,” he answered. “Can the oysters move?” “Just as much as my shoe.” [Illustration: A Welfleet oysterman]