Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/334

Rh After the Month of May it is Felony to carry away the Cultch, and punishable to take any other Oysters, unless it be those of size (that is to say) about the bigness of an half Crown piece, or when the two shells being shut, a fair shilling will rattle between them.

The places where these Oysters are chiefly catch'd, are called the Pont-Burnham, Maiden, and Colne-Waters; the latter taking its name from the River of Colne, which passeth by Colne-Chester, gives the name to that Town, and runs into a Creek of the Sea at a place called the Hythe, being the Suburbs of the Town.

This Brood, and other Oysters, they carry to Creeks of the Sea at Brickel-Sea, Mersey, Langno, Fringrego, Wivenho, Tolesbury, and Salt-coase, and andand [sic] there throw them into the Channel, which they call their Beds or Layers, where they grow and fatten, and in two or three years the smallest Brood will be Oysters of the size aforesaid.

Those Oysters which they would have green, they put into Pits about three foot deep, in the Salt-Marshes, which are overflowed only at Spring-tides, to which they have Sluices, and let out the Salt-water until it is about a foot and half deep.

These Pits from some quality in the Soil co-operating with the heat of the Sun, will become green, and communicate their colour to the Oysters that are put into them in four or five days, though they commonly let them continue there six Weeks, or two Months, in which time they will be of a dark green.

To prove that the Sun operates in the greening, Tolesbury Pits will green only in Summer; but that Rh