BRITISH OYSTERS : OLD AND NEW. 197
Book, 1832, that the oysters brought from Lynn were large,
about the size of a horse's hoof, and were opened with pincers.
To be stupid as an oyster is a Breton proverb, and Jeffreys
makes a quotation relative to its silence ; but sometime in the
"forties" of the last century a whistling oyster made the fame
of an oyster bar in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, immortalized
in Punch and in most writers on London topography.
If Dicquemart is right (Journ, de Physique, vol. xxviii., p.
244), oysters do possess a gleam of intelligence, as he says that
oysters dredged from a depth never uncovered at low tides,
open their shells, lose their water and die quickly, but if placed
in reservoirs and only left dry for a short time learn to keep
the shells closed, and live for a considerable period when wholly
deprived of water outwardly.
VAR. DEFORMIS Lamarck.
"Shell small, sub-oval, variable, fixed by the lower valve.
Habitat European seas, inhabiting dead shells, more often inside
the Pinna. Length, 8—11 mm." (Anim. sans Vert. p. 229, no. 31).
Dr. Turton (Conchylia Insularum Britannicarum, 1822),
makes no reference to this form by name, but says "a small
variety is found fixed to serpulae or the inside of old oyster shells
and sometimes in the cavities of rocks, with the upper valve
flat and a little scaly, the under value very convex and hollow,
especially under the hinge, the beak of the concave or under
valve often much lengthened, an evidence of age ; and it is fre-
quently deformed, and distorted by contact with harder objects.
It may be a distinct species, as it answers to the character given
by Lamarck to his O. deformis."
Defrance also mentions it as a very small shell, sub-oval,
variable, lower valve very thin, and fixed, 8-20 mm. in length.
On dead shells.
Jeffreys describes it as small, distorted, and often nearly
cylindrical ; and so far agrees with Lamarck. But the remainder
of his note, and his figure, appear to refer to another shell, dealt
with elsewhere, post.
O. deformis is also referred to by B. B. and D., in their
Roussillon Memoir, but they observe that, like the var.
parasitica, it may be regarded as an abnormal form of small size.
Dr. Jeffreys speaks of O. deformis as occupying the crevices