HELIX ASPERSA. 249 
Coleoptera, however, also commit great havoe among molluscan life, 
Drilus, Lampyris, Staphylinus, Silpha, ete., either in the perfect or larval 
stages, preying upon and destroying them. 
Many Diptera in their larval stages are especially inimical to mollusea, 
the Phoraw maculata Meigen being added by Mr. A. H. Pawson to the 
known parasites of this species. 
Among the ecto-parasites, Semper mentions that the foot of nearly every 
individual is infested by the larvee of certain Entozoa; while Garnault 
describes the lability to parasitic castration of this species by the ravages 
of the sporocysts of a ‘Trematode. 
Uses.— Although Helix pomatiu is usually more esteemed as food than 
the present species, this predilection is not universal, as we have the 
authority of M. Jules Colbeau in stating that Helix aspersa is preferred 
by the Belgians. 
In the south-west of England, especially about Bristol and Swindon, it 
is much sought after for food, under the name of “ wall fish,’ and it fur- 
nishes a regular occupation to a number of persons to search out and 
collect this species, which is offered for sale in Bath and Bristol, and 
probably other places. 
In France, they are also constantly offered for sale in the markets of 
Paris and other towns, and regularly supplied as part of a ship’s provisions 
to trading and other vessels ; while foreign seamen touching at our ports 
frequently make excursions inland to collect this species for food. 
In Spain, where these and other land mollusks are regularly used as 
food, there is, as in Valencia, a special snail market, where the women, 
who are called ‘ Caracolas,” congregate in the open market square with 
heaped-up baskets of snails, loudly crying their wares, and occasionally 
cracking a shell with their teeth to show the quality. 
As a healing plaster for wounds, slips of paper upon which H/. aspersa 
had crawled, were thirty years ago, according to Mr..W. M. Webb, sold at 
one penny the piece in London, and when applied to the wound induced 
rapid healing. 
Mr. D. Dyson, in his “Shells of Manchester,” records that vast quanti- 
ties of this species were formerly collected in Yorkshire from which to 
manufacture a greenish salve, which was exposed for sale on the stalls in 
Shudehill, Manchester, and was a very effective cure for corns. 
Geological Distribution.— Helix aspersa was long unknown in the 
British Isles from any but the most superficial and quite modern deposits, 
but the exertions of Messrs. Lewis Abbott, Kennard, Woodward, Rev. 
Rh. A. Bullen, and other enthusiastic workers have extended and confirmed 
its backward range in time, and demonstrated that although until quite 
recently its claim even to pre-Roman age in this country was disputed, it 
is now so frequently found in the ‘“ kitchen-middens ” of early Neolithic 
man that all doubts as to its antiquity have been set at rest. 
Prof. Rt. ‘Tate many years ago announced //. aspersa as one of our 
uppermost 'l'ertiary fossils, the record being based upon a single specimen 
said to have been found in the Alluvial beds of the Kennet Valley. but 
Mr. B. B. Woodward from his investigations of the subject believes that 
the specimen was not obtained from the undisturbed deposit but from one 
of the numerous holes which are dug out to obtain peat and which after- 
wards speedily fill up. 
