The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-03-19
OYSTERS.
The Evol ution Of the Practice Of Eating
the Bivalvular Delicacy.

the probabilities are that he was puz.
zled what to do with it; for the thing
was shut. Instinct told him that there
was something good to eat inside the
shell. Besides he had already robbed the
cookie and the mussel of their contents
and thoroughly appreciated them; SO
by some rude process of reasoning from
| analysis he felt sure that if he could
only get the oyster open he would find
something nice within. But the creature
had closed itself so tight that he could
not even get his nails in between the
edges. Its size prevented him putting
it into his mouth to crack it. For miles
and miles there was only mud and sand
on either side of him, so that he had
nothing hard enough to smash it upon.
In a half-hearted sort of way he en-
deavored to insinuate a splinter of a
cockle-shell to pry the valves open.
Then he triied with the thinner edge
with his teeth. At last he thought OF
his own skull, and raped the oyster on
| it; but not very hard, for it hurt him. He
| did it in contemplative sort of way
| just as a monkey bored to death with a
Brazil nut which it can not break, and yet
is loathe to throw away, sits and taps it on
| the palm of its paw, looking all about
him with an distracted expression OF
face. So safe the aboriginal man; now
and again he would brighten up to a
| renewed assault upon the obstinate
mollusc. He put it down on the sand,
and hurt his foot by stamping on it;
then he took it and threw it up as high
as he could in the air to see if it would
smash by the fall; then he put it in front
of him and apostrophized it, spoke seri-
ously to it, lectured it, scolded it,
abused it, coaxed it, fattered it, said
nasty things about it, appealed to it,
threw himself on its generosity, tainted
it, ridiculed it, sneered at it, invoked it,
prayed to it, blessed it, cursed it. But
the oyster was not to be moved either
by complaint or insult, it remained as
obdurate as that ''pebble-hearted cur, "
Launce's dog. Not word could he
get out of it; there was no more ex-
preston on its face than on slice of
cold pudding. 1t remained stolidly
shut. Then our ancestor gave way tic
a gloomy despair; he threw himself
down on the sand and glared with i'm.
potent desire at the exasperating shell.
fish. Bad, wicked thoughts came into
his mind. He saw his aged grandsire
approaching, and, reckoning to him
with fraudful smile, induced the poor
old man to sit down on the sand; and
then suddenly, without any warning,
he smote him on the crown of the head
with the oyster. Again and again the
mollusc descended, till at length,
in a frenzy of determination. he
gathered up all his force into
one decisive blow, which split his grand
sire's skull, but broke the she'll There
upon regardless of the corpse beside him
the assassin picked out the plump oyster
and swallowed it. He closed his eyes,
while smile of ineffable enjoyment
stole over his features, but only for a
moment. The oyster passed away like
beautiful dream. He sighed and rose.
1t was fearful price to pay for the de-
licious morsel. Yet other thoughts per-
picked him. His relatives were moi
numerous, and if he must be obliged to
use up one each time when he ate an
oyster he could not look forward to
more than couple of score at the most.
Nevertheless he gathered bushel or so
and went home, bordering over the
situation. He told his dreadful secret
to friend, and thatvery evening, as he
was asleep, his friend came and cracked
an oyster on his skull. The original
savage did not die, but his intellect was
permanently affected. This was not the
worst, however, for somehow the knowl-
edge of the fascinating bivalve spread,
and men went about with surreptitious
oysters concealed upon their persons,
on the chance ofmeeting with some one
on whose Uranium they could crack
them. 1t was dreadful time. But il
is on such foundations that Nature al
ways builds, and her superstructures
are raised upon ruins.
BY and by came the Stone Age, when
the soft sediments of river and sea had
hardened into rock, and men then
smashed the oysters open with frag-
ments of powders. They chose
smooth crag, and, putting the shell-ish |
into sings, slung them from very
short distance against the hard rock. |
This was better than using each others |
heads, and the beneficial results of the
change We're soon apparent Man, re-
lieyed from the perpetual suspicion of
having oysters cracked on his skull, had |
the leisure to give his thoughts to the
useful art. Before long they discovered |
the secret of sharpening flints into
oyster knives, and all went merrilv. |
Wise men tell us that these keen-edged |
slices OF flint and obsidian are ''hatchet- |
heads" and "arrow-heads. But this |
IS mere conjecture; picturesque, it is
true, but unreliable. 1t is probable that
they are all oyster knives in various |
stages of development. This much, at
any rate, is beyond all doubt-that
primitive man ate these delicious things
in enormous quantities. The sites of
many primeval settlements are now
only to be traced by the heaps of empty
oyster shells, which they were, in the
dirty, unsanitary way of remote an
tiquity, in the habit of throwing out of
their doors into the street.
In the ancient skitchen-middensn OF
Northern Europe, and mixed with more
lncient lava deposits, as in Kent's Hole
Cavern, are heaps of the shells, the
yestiges of the repasts of the cave-men.
IN America these relics of primeval
,yster-suppers form sometimes mounds