unaccountable antagonism between eminent authorities, for some salesmen warned us that the convex side of the bivalve must be underneath; others that the flat side must occupy the most dependent position; the penalty we were positively assured of infringing either rule would be the speedy death of the precious tenant. The round side is naturally underneath, as the flat valve is more easily raised by the occupant. Our last inquiries as to the price of the "breedy creatures," as Christopher North not unfitly called them, were made over twenty years ago. We believe that they now fetch half-a-crown a dozen-an enormous increase in price over the days of our childhood-and a few weeks ago we actually saw them marked three shillings a dozen in a shop near Trafalgar-square. But prices have been going up for years, until the rich can alone command the attention of oyster dredgers; for others such things as Natives are as though they were not. And yet how cheap they once were a single shilling would buy a larger number than any sane person would venture to eat at one sitting, unless he were a Vitellius or a Cæsar. London, Dublin, and Edinburgh were all happy in apparently inexhaustible supplies, offered at prices so moderate that they painfully disturb the equanimity of the present generation of oyster buyers. Fifty years ago 10d. would, in the Modern Athens, buy a hundred; and now, if the present rise in price continues, we may live to see them fetching 10d. apiece. British oysters were first brought to the notice of Roman gourmets in the days of Julius Agricola, A.D. 72, when that great general, having introduced the civilization of Rome to the inhabitants of our islands, imported to Rome the oysters of Britain. The far-famed Rutupians were taken from the shores of Richborough in Kent and were much appreciated. Juvenal, lashing the gastronomic excesses so prevalent in his time, speaks of Our Natives in the following terms: "And in our days none understood so well On the Rutupian or the Lucrine bed; (Sat. 4, 139.) When Trajan was in Parthia, many days' journey from the sea, Athenæus tells us that Apicius Cœlius, who must not be confounded with a namesake of his, the writer of a book on cookery, sent the Emperor fresh oysters, which he had kept sweet by a clever contrivance-real oysters, not shams like the anchovies, which the cook of Nicomedes, King of the Bithynians, made in imitation of the real fish, and set before that King, when he expressed a wish for them, he, too, at the time, being far distant from the sea. Nor was it difficult to transport shell fish long distances inland, and as soon as preference was given to the British mollusc thousands of slaves were employed on the Atlantic shores, procuring the oysters, which in Rome are positively said to have fetched their weight in gold, although, unless the evidence was above doubt, one would not be obliged to accept the statement. The expense of keeping up a liberal supply in the Imperial capital became at last so enormous that the censors were obliged to interfere, according to the customs of an age which tolerated sumptuary laws.* This mode of transporting oysters long distances, says Mr. M. S. Lovell, in his valuable and interesting "Edible Mollusca," alluding to Apicius' "clever contrivance," may have been the one still practised in Italy, where, according to Poli, oysters are carried from Tarentum to Naples in bags tightly packed with snow; the latter by its coolness preserves them, and by preventing them from opening allows them to retain sufficient moisture to keep them alive for a long time. Our modern and better methods, however, relieve us of trouble and anxiety, and we transport the oyster, fresh or tinned, incredible distances, with only a tithe of the expense which the Romans had to face. The Romans were, like ourselves, in the habit of sending presents of oysters to friends, who returned the compliment in the shape of a boar's head, fat ducks, or some other farm produce. Ausonius wrote a very amusing letter to his friend Theon, who had sent him only thirty oysters as a present : "Accepi, dilecte Theon, numerabile munus. Verum quot fuerint, subjecta monosticha signant." "The oysters were fine, but so few, very easily counted-they were just three times his ten fingers, or Gorgon's heads, if you multiply them by ten." Around the Forum at Silchester the remains of many shops have been recently discovered, among them a taberna, for the cultivated Roman did not care only to drink the metheglin or native British beer, clearly a fishmonger's, in which are still to be seen numerous shells of that precious and luscious bivalve always so dear to the Italian epicure, a butcher's stall was close at hand; in the foundations of the last iron hooks and a steelyard were found. To come, however, to more scientific matters. The oyster is a highly organised and specialized lamelli-branchiate mollusc, holding a far higher place in the animal world than many of its votaries suppose, who fancy, as it glides down their throats, that it is low down in the scale of creation; on the contrary, it is a wonderful little fellow, far more marvellous than the most perfect piece of machinery ever turned out of any human workshop. Oysters grow fast: at six months they reach the size of a sixpence, at twelve they are an inch in diameter, at two years two inches across, while at three years they have a diameter of three inches. Probably they are in their prime at seven years, though their life extends to twenty. The shells, however, with advancing age, change their texture a good deal and become honeycombed with cavities of some size containing sea-water. The fertility of oysters in parcs, or parks, as Huxley spells the word, is believed to be considerably diminished, although the oysters themselves are fatter and, therefore, superior, and in greater request at table. Should only two or three ova in a million come to maturity, as the oyster deposits a million ova a year, the supply should increase rather than fall off. Artificial culture is often advocated, and was, thirty years ago, coming into fashion in England and in France, but Huxley believes that only a very small and wholly inadequate return rewarded most of the persons who were induced to take it up, while many lost enormously. Little is even yet known of the conditions favourable to rapid multiplication, but it is certain that the sheets of water selected for the purpose must be sheltered from storms, although they must also be freely open to natural currents, and the water must be neither too cold nor too hot. Some curious and most instructive instances of oysters appearing in vast numbers in waters not before favourable to them have been recorded, one in the Limfjord in Northern Kattegat is very remarkable, though readily accounted for by the fierce storm which broke through the dam separating the Limfjord from the North Sea. The almost unaccountable falling off in the supply of late years has puzzled many observers. Competent authorities attach great importance to bad spatting seasons, and Mr. Nicholls, foreman of the Whitstable Oyster Company, in his evidence before the Fisheries' Commisioners in 1865, drew pointed attention to the small amount of spat in some years, stating that a good year only occurred once in six. Much less is known of the conditions favouring reproduction than might at this time of day be expected. The enemies of the oyster are at least three, besides its greatest foe of all-man, and these are not over-dredging, but the depredations of starfish, whelk tingles and dog whelks, and too great heat or cold; for the young oyster, as well as its maturer kinsman, is very sensitive to any great rise; to both of which in shallow basins, in high latitudes, and in variable climates it is peculiarly subject. Hot spells and hard frosts have both been known to kill off immense numbers, and to reduce the yield for a long time. The abundance of their foes is shown by one instance :14,000 dog whelks have been picked up in a single month in 100 acres of oyster park in the Bay of Arcachon. Huxley, whose authority is above question, denies that over-dredging accounts for the diminished supply; he admits the increased demand, partly due to the larger area over which oysters can be distributed by the better methods and greater facilities of modern times; he also attaches much importance to bad spatting seasons, but he points out that it is not the object of oyster dredgers to denude the natural beds, and he questions if they could possibly remove a sufficient number to leave too few for effectual reproduction, but, however that be, it is obviously not to their interest to go on dredging till all are cleared off, and in practice dredging ceases to be commercially profitable long before the stock is dangerously exhausted. Nevertheless, practical men contend that overdredging does in large measure account for the falling off; and their opinion is entitled to great respect. A close time for oysters, often advocated as a sufficient remedy, has no analogy with that for salmon and game; it should never be forgotten that the latter are also protected by licences and duties, and that preserving by means of keepers is more or less extensively practised. Perhaps one of the best plans would be the removal of small oysters to protected waters. The depredations of reckless oyster dredgers are not easy to check, and would demand a vast and costly machinery, somewhat resembling that now required for the successful protection of game; unfortunately, game preservation is not exactly profitable, and oyster preservation, if it is to mean anything, must be remunerative. How can that be accomplished? The oyster is not a hermaphrodite in the ordinary acceptation of the term: it, however, alternates its sex, the same individual being for a time male, at another female; and in the course of the same season it may change four times. This is one of the most remarkable characteristics of this curious creature; much, however, remains to be made out concerning even this matter. What we really need to make oysters abundant and cheap is more light on the conditions favourable to them, and some knowledge as to the best means of growing them artificially. Could we learn how to obtain and preserve the spat, and bring it to maturity in sheltered sheets of water, we might grow oysters in countless millions. Surely it cannot be beyond the reach of science thus to put them within our control as it were, so that we should be able to grow them in almost any number we desired, and at moderate cost: the latter is the most important consideration. Why should not energetic and 'systematic efforts be made to turn to good account some of the vast sheets of water in the South of England? If the American scalps only cover 100 square miles, as we have read, and yet produce hundreds of millions a year, we could find many square miles of available foreshore, which would answer admirably the same purpose, and pay a high return. Dorset might send to market thousands of bushels every year; but before this could be carried out the oyster must be made private property, or our daring but lawless brood of southern fishermen would soon make sad havoc. We have ourselves known old Cornish women, who remembered and talked with coldblooded exultation of the not very distant days when shipwrecked mariners were cut down with hatchets as they attempted to climb up the rocks of that ironbound and inhospitable coast; and only give the Cornish and Devon fisherfolk the opportunity of robbing other people's parcs, which might cost £6,000 a piece to stock, and no scruples of conscience would deter them, though the fear of the law might be more effectual. IN the year 1881 Mr. Burton M. Watkins published in the Transactions of this Club, a list of the phanerogamic plants found upon the Doward Hills. It was suggested, in the Preface to his paper, that the different groups of Cryptogamic plants, or some of them, inhabiting these hills, might at a future time be similarly catalogued. The following paper is simply an attempt to carry out this suggestion, so far as the True Mosses are concerned. We are thus, by the very scope of our paper, relieved from the necessity of any fresh description of the area, a part of whose vegetation we are attempting to deal with. It has been already accurately delineated and described in Mr. Watkins' paper and to the limits there adopted we propose strictly to adhere.* Suffice it here to say that the Doward Hills consist of a tract, between one and two square miles in extent, of woody, rocky, and broken ground, much diversified both in geological strata and in aspect of surface, lying immediately to the south-west of the village of Whitchurch; bounded to the north by the line of the Ross and Monmouth turnpike road, and to the east, south and south-west by the tortuous course of the river Wye. We would refer those who wish for a fuller and more accurate description to Mr. Watkins' paper, to which the present stands in the relation of an Appendix. Rich as this small tract of land is in its phanerogamic vegetation, it is certainly equally rich in the small group of cryptogams with which we are now dealing. It is possible that other orders of the lower plants would prove in like manner to be remarkably developed on these hills, if sought with equal diligence. In dealing with the Flowering orders and the Ferns, Mr. Watkins was, from obvious reasons, precluded from recording habitats; since the result of such records in so small an area as that now in view, would certainly have been to promote the pillage and possibly cause the destruction of the treasures, which it is one of the objects of the Woolhope Club to preserve. But the same considerations do not apply, or only with very limited force, to the group of plants here dealt with. These are the subjects, as yet, of such scant attention from the general public, and even among naturalists have so few students; they are, moreover, in themselves often so inconspicuous, and need such minute search, that there is at present no cause to fear their extermination through the inconsiderate love of an over-eager or over-numerous public. We have, therefore, in the following list, given in most cases such details of locality as may, we hope, assist lovers of nature to find the objects of their love: trusting thereby also to stir up the affections of a wider group of lovers for the things we ourselves love We wish, however, to say that the acreage of the Dowards was slightly over-estimated in Mr. Watkins' paper; 2,126 acres being more likely to represent the true area of the hills than 2,500, as there stated. |
