Vitellius ate oysters four times daily, and at each meal is said to have got through 1,200 of his own natives! Seneca, who praised the charms of poverty, ate several hundred a week. Horace is enthusiastic about them; he notes the people who first provided him with them, and the name of the gourmet who at the first _bite_(37) was able to tell whence the particular breed came. “When I but see the oyster’s shell, I look and recognise the river, marsh, or mud Where it was raised.” The shell is often an indication of the particular locality whence it is brought, and no doubt the modern oyster dealer, if not the ordinary eater, can always tell rightly. For although London swears by her Milton and Colchester “natives,” Edinburgh has her Pandores and Aberdours, and Dublin her Carlingfords and “Powldoodies of Burran.” [Illustration: OYSTERS (_Ostrea edulis_). A, Oysters of twelve to fifteen months; B, five or six months; C, three or four months; D, one to two months; and E, twenty days after birth.] “There is one little spot,” says the author of the entertaining but veracious little work quoted before, “on the shores of Cornwall which I cannot pass over, because from it came one of the colonies on the banks of the Thames from which the Whitstable boats still draw their annual supply. Into Mount’s Bay, the Helford River, upon which stands the little town of Helstone, empties itself, opposite Mount St. Michael’s, into the sea, and in the estuary of that little river, a person of the name of Tyacke, within the memory of the ‘oldest inhabitant,’ rented certain oyster‐beds, famous among Cornish gourmets for a breed of oysters, which, it is said, the Phœnicians, ‘a long time ago,’ had discovered to be infinitely preferable to the watery things they got at home. These Helford oysters are regularly brought to London.... Determined to make his venture, Tyacke loaded a fishing‐smack with the best produce of his beds, and coasted along the southern shores, till passing round the Isle of Thanet he found himself in the mouth of the Thames. Little did the elated oyster‐dredger think that mouth would swallow up the whole of his cargo; but so it came to pass. It had long been evident to those on board that oysters which travel, no less than men, must have rations allowed on the voyage, if they are to do credit to the land of their birth. Now the voyage had been long and tedious, and the oysters had not been fed; so Tyacke got into his boat, and obtained an interview with the owner of the spot when he reached the shore. He asked permission to lay down his oysters, and feed them. This was granted, and after a few days the spores of _ulva latissima_ and _enteromorpha_, and of the host of delicate fibrous plants which there abound, and all of which are the oyster’s delight, made the whole green and fat, and in the finest condition for re‐shipment. Four days, it is said, will suffice to make a lean oyster, on such a diet, both green and