Our British Snails 9 



and others, in good stead in higher matters of 

 thought and action, and the virtues of Prudence, 

 Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude will all 

 increase in you as you learn more about what is in 

 man, what man should be, and how men should 

 be treated. Let us take Fortitude for example. 

 I have known boys who collected one kind of 

 thing eagerly for awhile, but soon got tired of 

 it, and generally had little power of " sticking " 

 to anything. On the other hand, I was once 

 admiring the magnificent collection of shells owned 

 by a middle-aged doctor, and asked him, " When 

 did you begin to collect .? " '' When I was 

 seven," was his answer. I should expect to find 

 more Fortitude in that doctor's character than 

 in that of a boy who collected " all things in 

 turn and nothing long." 



Yet I myself was middle-aged before I felt 

 disgusted with myself, when gazing on a lad's col- 

 lection of British land shells, that I should so long 

 have been groping in hedges and ditches, and 

 yet never have noticed the variety and the beauty 

 of members of the snail family. (That lad, by 

 the bye, is now a Professor in an American 

 University, and a great authority on shells and 

 other matters.) Since then I have gathered a 

 complete collection of the British land and fresh- 

 water shells, and a very large and valuable one 

 of the HelicidcB — i.e. the family to which the 

 common or garden snail belongs — of every 



