Volume 1

Oysters, and all about them : being a complete history of the titular subject, exhaustive on all points of necessary and curious information from the earliest writers to those of the present time, with numerous additions, facts, and notes / by John R. Philpots.

  • Philpots, John Richards.
Date:
1890-1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oysters, and all about them : being a complete history of the titular subject, exhaustive on all points of necessary and curious information from the earliest writers to those of the present time, with numerous additions, facts, and notes / by John R. Philpots. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been sometimes supposed. They declared, for instance, that there oysters might be seen growing on trees ; and the statement was not merely denounced as incredible, but as absolutely false. But, as many facts attested by Bruce met with direct contradiction, yet have since been placed beyond all doubt by the testimony of numerous and unim- peachable witnesses, so has it proved with the one just mentioned. How wise is it, then, to guard against extremes! The scepticism on which some pride them- selves is closely allied with the credulity they affect to despise. Many are the statements of science which are not merely startling but confounding; they may even involve what we have previously deemed to be impossible ; yet the more we listen to them intelligently, the more shall we be disposed to take up a central position far away from the two opposite evils. If we do so in the present instance, we shall find that the common mangrove, and also others of its tribe, {c) are to be observed all along the shores of the tropics, both in the new and the old world, rooting themselves in the mud— the very soil for which they are expressly designed—and forming dense forests, even at the verge of the ocean, and below high-water mark. Peculiar as the plants of this family are for the germination of their seeds, even while attached to the branches, they are equally so for the numerous root-like projections which serve as so many supports to the stem ; hence, on the retiring of the tide, and on the margins of the great rivers which are fringed by these trees in tropical climates, the stems may often be seen covered with oysters. The species thus found is expressly called the “ tree oyster.” [d) The negroes living {c) Rhizophorese. [d] Ostrea arborea.
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