Xin RIVERSIDE LETTERS 103 



snails thus spreading themselves out on the 

 walls it could not be for food, for the walls 

 were entirely bare of vegetation ; neither 

 could it be in order to collect lime from the 

 walls, as there were quite as many on the glass 

 windows and the iron piping. The grass in 

 the churchyard was long and moist, amongst 

 it were plants of the common wild mallow on 

 which I found several of the same sort of 

 snails feeding. It was far too early in the 

 year for them to have been in search of 

 hybernating quarters ; it was also rather too 

 late in the year for them to have crawled 

 there for breeding purposes. Snails do not 

 mind rain in the least, or I should have thought, 

 as we had been having a very wet season, 

 that they had climbed the walls to dry and 

 sun themselves ; possibly they had been in- 

 creasing the growth of their shells and climbed 

 the walls to rest themselves and to harden 

 their shells in the sun and air.* 



* I looked at these walls on the 28th September, 1895, and found 

 that there were still a number of snails on the walls then, though 

 perhaps not quite so many as on the 8th of August the year before. 



