OYSTER.
The oyster is a well-known and diffused mollusc, occurring in many parts of the eastern seas. At Kottiar, near Trincomalee, the edible oysters are of prodigious size. The shell of one of these measured a little more than 11 inches in length by half as many broad, thus unexpectedly attesting the correctness of one of the stories related by the historians of Alexander's expedition, that in India they had found oysters a foot long. Pliny says, In Indico mari Alexandri rerum,auctores pedalia inveniri prodidere.' Darwin says that amongst the fossils of Patagonia he found a massive gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter.' The oyster is much relished as an article of food, and in France and Britain has been cultivated.
Oysters are amazingly fruitful, one of them is said to contain 1,200,000 eggs ; so that a single oyster might yield enough to fill 12,000 barrels.
The eggs are expelled in the form of spawn, a white fluid resembling a drop of grease, in which the microscope reveals innumerable minute oysters. This substance is called `spat' by the fishermen, and the matter in which they swim doubtless serves to attach them to various sub marine bodies, or to individuals of their own species. In this way are formed innumerable banks of oysters, which are kept up by collecting the spawn at sea and in different places along the coasts of England and France, and depositing it in the sheltered and shallow waters selected for oyster layings,' which are usually kept un touched till they have arrived at some size, that is in the course of two or three years. The pearl oyster is the Meleagrina margaritifera.