Ever since the apocryphal period of this legend, men have gone on eating oysters. Poets, princes, pontiffs, orators, statesmen, and wits have gluttonised over the oyster-bed. Oysters were at one time, it is true, in danger of being forgotten. From the fourth century to about the fifteenth they were not much in use; but from that date to the present time the demand has never slackened. Going back to the times which we now regard as classic, we are told—as I will by and by relate in more detail when I come to describe the art of oyster-farming—that we owe the original idea of pisciculture to a certain Sergius Orata, who invented an oyster-pond in which to breed oysters, not for his own table, but for profit. We have all read of the feasts and fish-dinners of the classic Italians. These were on a scale, as has been already indicated, far surpassing our modern banquets at Greenwich and Blackwall, even though the charge for these be, as was recently complained in the _Times_, two and three guineas for each person. Talking of fish-dinners reminds me of a description I have read of a dish produced in China containing juvenile crabs. On the cover being removed the crablets jump out on the table and are greedily seized and eaten by the guests who are assembled. The dish is filled with vinegar, which imparts great liveliness to the young creatures. The shell is soft and gelatinous, and the _morceau_ is highly palatable. Lucullus had sea-water brought to his villa in canals from the coast of Campania, in which he bred fish in such abundance for the use of his guests that not less than £35,000 worth was sold at his death. Vitellius ate oysters all day long, and some people insinuate that he could eat as many as a thousand at one sitting—a happiness too great for belief! Callisthenes, the philosopher of Olynthus, was also a passionate oyster-eater, and so was Caligula, the Roman tyrant. The wise Seneca dallied over his few hundreds every week, and the great Cicero nourished his eloquence with the dainty. The Latin poets sang the praises of the oyster, and the fast men of ancient Rome enjoyed the poetry during their carouse, just as modern fellows, not at all classic, enjoy a song over their oysters in the parlour of a London or provincial tavern.