An old adage tells us that “He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.” Mr. Bertram tells us how the discovery was made. “Once upon a time a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, and listening to the murmur of the ‘sad sea waves’—or, as Mr. Disraeli would say, of ‘the melancholy main’—when he espied a very old and ugly oyster‐ shell, all coated over with parasites and weeds. Its appearance was so unprepossessing that he kicked it aside with his foot; whereupon the mollusc, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more closely. Seeing the beautiful cream‐coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell was probably curious or beautiful, he lifted up the aged ‘native’ for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was intended as a further insult, snapped its nacreous portcullis close down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After relieving his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth. ‘Delightful!’ he exclaimed, opening wide his eyes; ‘what is this?’ and again he sucked his finger. Then flashed upon him the great truth that he had discovered a new pleasure—had, in fact, opened up to his fellows a source of immeasurable delight. He proceeded at once to realise the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster’s threshold, and warily ventured on a piece of the mollusc itself. ‘Delicious!’ he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, without the usual accompaniment, as we now take it, of ‘foaming brown stout’ or ‘pale Chablis’ to wash it down—and, sooth to say, it requires neither—did that solitary, nameless man indulge in the first oyster‐banquet!”(38) The authorities all agree, as above, that however good some cooked oysters may be, if you would have them in their most delicious condition, you must take them _au naturel_. In Wilson’s “Noctes Ambrosianæ” we find the following:—“I never, at any time o’ the year, had recourse to the cruet till after the lang hunder; and in September, after four months’ fast frae the creturs, I can easily devour them by theirsels, just in their ain liccor, ontill anither fifty; and then, to be sure, just when I am beginning to be a wee stawed, I apply first the pepper to a squad; and then, after a score or twa in that way, some dizzen and a half wi’ vinegar, and finish off, like you, wi’ a wheen to the mustard, till the brodd is naething but shells.... There’s really no end in nature to the eatin’ of eisters.”