SHELLS ON THE CHALK-DOWNS. 75 



We have hardly any, except the common brown 

 snail, now left. I looked among the debris round 

 the rats' hole, to see if they had chosen any particular 

 kind of dainty snail, as the Romans did, and some 

 moderns have done, but the broken shells were 

 almost all those of the common brown snail, 

 with only a coloured one here and there among 

 them." 



Thickly sprinkled over the chalk hills and sheep 

 walks of the South Downs may be found the heath 

 snail, H. ericetorum ; the zoned snail, H. virgata ; 

 and the wrinkled snail, H. caperata (PL IX., figs. 

 1, 2, and 3). After rain, numbers of these may be 

 seen scattered over the downs, clinging to the grass 

 stems or leaves of the different shrubs with which 

 the downs are studded ; and, from the fact of their 

 being gregarious and so abundant, the popular notion 

 has arisen that it sometimes rains snails. Mr. Gwyn 

 Jeffreys thinks that the idea of their descending in 

 showers may also have originated in a whirlwind 

 having caught up a number of them, by sweeping 

 along a grassy plain, and dropping its contents in a 

 limited area. Borlase, in his " Natural History of 

 Cornwall," speaks of these snails as " yielding a most 



