‘SNAILS. 645 
had a few days ago for my cutting for the stone, for which the 
Lord make me truly thankful! Very merry at, before, and 
after dinner; and the more for that my dinner was great, and 
most neatly dressed by our owne only mayde. We had a 
fricasee of rabbits, and chickens, a leg of mutton boyled, and 
three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lambe, a dish of 
roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey 
pie (a most rare pie !), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several 
sorts, and all things mighty noble, and to my great content. 
Mrs. Wright, and I, and the rest of the women, with Roger 
Pepys.” 
Snail shells in powder are “lithontriptick, and good for the 
gravel; they cure clefts, or chops in the hands, lips, or funda- 
ment.” Southey has told in The Doctor that any “ chafing of 
the skin is instantly relieved by the slime of a Slug; put the 
Slug on the sore place, it heals you, and you need not hurt it ; 
the part once slimed the Slug may be let go.” The liver of 
Slugs yields sugar. As medicines both Snails, and Slugs are 
best eaten raw because of their coagulable albumin (like the 
white of egg) then remaining soft. Lister speaks of Snails 
seasoned with oil, pepper, and salt. Uric acid is produced in 
Slugs, and Snails, by an organ (the saccus calcareus) which is 
supposed to be the first vestige of a kidney ; this uric acid has 
been turned (by Dr. Prout) into a purple colour of great beauty 
(murexide). Mr. Wood makes mention of a certain old dame 
who used to search in the hedges for Snails for converting thereby 
the milk she sold into cream ; this she did by crushing the Snails 
through a piece of linen. whilst squeezing their juice into the 
milk. Lady Honeywood’s “ Snail-water” was well known in 
the seventeenth century. “Take a quart of shelled Snails, 
wash them in salt, and water, then scalld them in boyling water ; 
then distill them in a quart of milk upon white sugar candy, 
and a branch of speremint.” An old nursery distich of Dame 
Gammer Gurton’s has quaintly related how :— 
“ Four-and-twenty tailors 
Went to kill a snail, 
The best man among them 
Dur’st not touch its tail ; 
She put out her horns, 
Like a little dun cow, 
Run, tailors, run, - 
Or she'll kill you all now.” 
