Oysters are delicate morsels—still appreciated by that class of the population which nevertheless shudders at the thought of eating the high-flavoured “whilk” or the gristly “periwinkle,” and neglects the admirable mussel, so rightly valued by our French friends. There are a number of interesting facts about the nature and life-history of oysters, and the different kinds of them—a knowledge of which does not diminish, but, on the contrary, rather adds to the pleasure with which one swallows the shell-fish. I remember the time when “natives” were sold in London at sixpence the score. When I was a schoolboy at St. Paul’s they were no more than sixpence a dozen at the best shops in Cheapside. That inevitable form of British enterprise which is known as “monopoly,” many years since laid hold of the oyster business, and rapidly raised the price of the best natives to eight times what it had been, while the typhoid “scare” came subsequently as a sort of poetical justice, and threatened to ruin the oyster monopolists. As a matter of fact, there is no difficulty in freeing oysters from any possible contamination by the typhoid germ. They have only to be kept for ten days or a fortnight in large tanks of sea-water of unquestionable purity—after removal from the fattening grounds (tanks or waterways), and they rid themselves of any possible infection. It is the interest of the oyster merchant to make sure that this treatment is strictly enforced. It is a noteworthy fact that the anciently established habit of drenching an oyster with vinegar before eating it is precisely the best treatment, except cooking them, which could have been adopted in order to destroy the vitality of typhoid germs—although the existence of such germs was unknown when the practice arose, and vinegar or lemon-juice was taken with uncooked oysters as a matter of taste, not as a safeguard.