302
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
variety tincta and even if it prove to be the same there is sufficient
difference to make a distinctive name useful for reference.
The "Pandoure" or Forth Shells seem to have been very
plentiful at one time, although, unless replaced, nearly absent
from the Forth waters through want of care in dredging. Mr.
Calderwood tells me that in the season as many as thirty smack
loads were sent to London. Odd valves of this larger type are
occasionally found in the later London debris, and have got
confused with our own genuine var. Rutupina. Its consumption
in the Scottish capital seems to have been stupendous, as my
informant tells me that in clearing the site of an old tavern, the
workmen had to cut through a bed of shells 15 feet thick ; the
relics of many an old time feast ! I have not seen this Rutupinian
type from any continental locality. The common edible oyster
(ante p. 193) of our eastern coasts probably originated in the
North Sea as a deep-sea shell, some examples obtained from an
old site near the original mouth of the Alde River having their
irregular manner of growth.
The shell here called var. Celtica (p. 200 ante), had its metro-
polis, and probably its origin, in the far North. It abounds in
the Shetlands. One of this type was figured by Dr. Oyen of the
Christian a Museum from Vandelsbakken in Nordhjem the
most northerly locality to which the oyster has been traced.
I have a good example from Uddevalla.
Profiteering in Oysters was not unknown in olden days. A
certain Roger Calf was in A.D. 1375 presented before one of the
Norwich Leet Courts for forestalling, otherwise cornering, the
market, so that "whereas the people had been wont to have
100 oysters for 11/2d," Roger sold them at an advance for 2d. or
3d.
Two pence for the long hundred (120) seems to have been the
normal price for the next two hundred years.
Gadwall in Essex.—On November 7th, 1920, I observed two
Gadwall (Anas strepera) on the lake in Navestock Park, Essex. . . .
The only record I can find of this species in the County since The Birds
of Essex was published in 1890 is that of one obtained at Manningtree in
Dec. 1913 (British Birds, vii., p. 323), and Mr. Miller Christy (Vict. Hist.
Essex) describes it as a very scarce winter visitor.—William E. Glegg,
in British Birds, xiv., p. 188.