HELICIDjE. SNAIL. 15 



poor country people eat no other meat all the year, ex- 

 cept at Easter." 



Dr. Ebrard adds that, during the famine of 1816 and 

 1817, snails were most valuable articles of food to the 

 inhabitants of Central France ; again, that from the 

 coasts of Saintonge and Aunis, snails have been for a 

 long time exported in casks to Senegal and the Antilles; 

 and that M. Valmont-Bomard saw the peasants, in the 

 neighbourhood of La Rochelle, gathering an immense 

 quantity of small snails, to send to America, in casks 

 filled with branches of trees, crossed again and again, so 

 that the snails might be able to attach themselves firmly, 

 and not be much shaken during the transport. 



Helix aperta, which is not known in England, but is 

 figured in Messrs. Forbes and Hanley's l British Concho- 

 logy/ from a dead specimen having been found in Guern- 

 sey, in 1839, is highly esteemed amongst real connois- 

 seurs of snails, and is found in Provence (where it is 

 called by the Proven eaux tapada, tapa, or tapet), in some 

 parts of Italy, and in the islands of the Mediterranean. 



M. Moquin-Tandon tells us that vessels regularly visited 

 the coasts of Liguria, in search of considerable quantities 

 of Helix aperta, for food for the higher classes at Rome.* 

 The shell is of a yellowish-olive colour and nearly translu- 

 ecnt, thin, and of an ovate-globular form. It has a large 

 mouth, with the peristome white, and the whorls four in 

 number. In the heat of summer and during the winter 

 this Helix, like Helix pomatia, buries itself in holes in 

 the ground, shutting up the aperture of its shell with a 

 white calcareous epiphragm. Two of the specimens 

 we have in our collection, which were sent from Italy, 

 still have this epiphragm very perfectly preserved} and it 



* At Rome, Helix aperta is called Monacello. 



