256 bushels containing each 25,000 oysters, 4th year’s spawn, in 1st year of growth, spat at 20s. per bushel 256 ———-—— 13,756 At Faversham, Queenborough, and Rochester, there is a large commerce carried on in this particular shell-fish. In others of the “parks” at these places, “natives” are grown in perfection. The company of the burghers of Queenborough grow the fine Milton oyster so well known to the connoisseur, and the company’s beds are well attended to. I may note the Faversham Company, said to be the oldest among the Thames companies, having been in existence for a few centuries. All of these companies grow the “natives,” and I may explain that the portion of the beds set apart for the rearing of “natives” is as sacred as the waxen cells devoted to the growth of queen bees, and the coarser denizens of the mid-channel are not allowed to be mixed therewith. The management of all the Kent and Essex oyster companies is pretty much the same, but there are also gentlemen who trade solely upon their own account; there is Mr. Allston, for instance, a London oyster-merchant, who keeps his own fleet of vessels, and does a very large business in this particular shell-fish. The demand for native and other oysters by the Londoners alone is something wonderful, and constitutes of itself a large branch of commerce—as the numerous gaily-lit shell-fish shops of the Strand and Haymarket will testify. These emporiums for the sale of oysters and stout are mostly fed through Billingsgate, which is the chief piscatorial bourse of the great metropolis. It is not easy to arrive at correct statistics of what London requires in the way of oysters; but, if we set the number down as being nearly 800,000,000 we shall not be very far wrong. To provide these, the dredgermen or fisher people at Colchester, and other places on the Essex and Kent coasts, prowl about the sea-shore and pick up all the little oysters they can find—these ranging from the size of a threepenny-piece to a shilling; and persons and companies having layings purchase them to be nursed and fattened for the table, as already described. At other places the spawn itself is collected, by picking it from the pieces of stone, or the old oyster-shells to which it may have adhered; and it is nourished in pits, as at Burnham, for the purpose of being sold to the Whitstable people, who carefully lay that brood in their grounds. A good idea of the oyster-traffic may be obtained from the fact that, in some years, the Whitstable men have paid £30,000 for brood, in order to keep up the stock of their far-famed oysters. Mr. Hawkins says that he knows a man who is proprietor of only three acres of oyster-layings, and yet from that confined area he annually sells from 1500 to 2000 wash of the best native oysters.