Large quantities are grown also in Japan and China, and in the latter country there is a heavy trade in dried oysters, the bivalves being cooked and then sun-dried.
The oyster is peculiar in the fact that age makes no difference in its tenderness. Custom and trade demands result in its being consumed while still young and com paratively small, but if left to live until old and very much larger, the flesh is just as tender and fresh. The illustration on page 444 shows the average size of an oyster at the ages of one, two, six and eight years.
By almost universal custom, oysters are tabooed during the months of May, June, July and August, but there is really no good reason for thus banishing them from the bill of fare. The oyster is not a desirable article of diet when spawning, which period covers from three to four weeks, but as the time of spawning differs in various locali ties, no elimination of certain fixed invariable months can ensure protection against their use in that condition, and the same care that is now exercised during eight months in the year could certainly be extended to cover the remaining four.
The rule is, however, a tradition of great and venerable age! It was first, we believe, put on record in 1599, by a certain Dr. Butler, the vicar of an English country parish—but he can hardly be considered an authority sufficiently weighty to bind the human race for all time to come! The custom has been sustained with some reservations by recent European investigations, because of a disease apparently peculiar to that hemisphere to which oysters cultivated there are subject during the summer months, but the symptoms noted have not been found in this country to any appreciable extent and to little, if any, greater degree in summer than at other seasons. In some sections of the United States, oysters have indeed always been eaten
as freely in summer as in winter without any bad effects being noted.
A valuable peculiarity of oysters is the ease with which their lives can be sus tained for a long time after being removed from their native element. Placed in a cool damp place, with the deep shell down and occasionally sprinkled with brackish water, they may be kept alive and in good condition for weeks. This tenacity is attributed to the liquor in the shells, which serves to sustain the respiratory currents.
When removed from the shell or "shucked," the oyster may still be kept in edible condition for several days, but it is then necessary to remove its liquor, for, although this is the medium by which existence is sustained while in the shell, it has been found to have the opposite effect after shucking. Shucked oysters which are to be transported any considerable distance, are carefully washed, frequently in five or six waters, until no particle of any substance but the bivalve itself remains. Thus pre pared, packed in air-tight receptacles and kept cold, they may be held eight to ten days without injuring their flavor or otherwise affecting them as an article of food.
Oysters should always be kept in a cool place, but never where there is any danger of freezing. The Color Page of OYSTERS faces page 436.