Thus it happens that the oyster-fishers regard the starfish with the bitterest hatred. It is probably the worst feeling these burly, genial, jerseyed fellows entertain; for they don’t really dislike the person who doesn’t eat oysters. Him they regard merely with a half-amused, half-pitying contempt. Always, of course, excepting oyster-poachers, against whom no law can, of course, be sufficiently severe. To deal with the poachers who come out at night to dredge in the preserves of the fishermen who, after ages of oyster-culture, were incorporated by Act of Parliament into the Corporation of Free Dredgers, in 1793, and have in latter years converted themselves into the “Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company,” there are guard-boats always at hand, and, should they not be sufficient, there are artful contrivances laid upon the sea-bed, called “the creeps.” These consist of chains with barbed grapnels attached at intervals, which intercept and destroy the dredge-nets of these illegal dredgers. There are not many prettier sights than that of the oyster-fleet, on a sunny day; the red-brown sails of the ten- to twenty-ton yawls going in stately procession over these shallow waters. They come back with uncounted millions of “brood” for laying down in this restricted pasture off Whitstable, or with mature oysters for the markets. In the season, which extends by Act of Parliament from August 5th to May 14th, as many as 200,000 “natives” are despatched from Whitstable in a day; and great is the activity to be observed here in that time, on the foreshore, and in the wooden shanties where they are scrubbed clean and packed carefully in barrels. Be sure, the Whitstable folk will impress upon you that there is no competition possible with the local specialty. Surely he must have been one of these local patriots who originally propounded this excruciating conundrum: “What is the difference between a Whitstable oyster and a bad one?” the answer being, “One is a native, the other a settler!” A pretty, pretty wit! Among other efforts on this subject this may be recalled: “Why is an oyster the greatest curiosity in the world?” “Because you have to take it out of its bed before you can tuck it in.” One quaint old feature of Whitstable beach is the unconventional lighthouse, cobbled up out of some old copperas-works. It makes not a bad picture, looking out across the Swale, with the cliffs of Warden Point beyond, and the oyster-dredging fleet in between. At low water the shallow channel displays a long rocky ridge called the “Street Stones,” supposed to be the remains of a Roman causeway.