104 RIVERSIDE LETTERS Xlll 



I have frequently noticed that the common 

 tabby snail at times, during the summer 

 months, takes to mounting walls and odd 

 places, resting apparently on the elevated 

 situation for a considerable time ; they 

 generally seem to choose angles, where two 

 walls meet, or some shelter or ledge, and 

 almost always select a dry bare wall. The 

 dryness of the wall leads to their destruction, 

 in my garden, for the dry wall shows up their 

 track and directs my attention to them. 



I have often seen long tortuous tracks of 

 snails over bare walls and even on the inner 

 walls of sheds and outbuildings. 



In the breeding season I have seen these 

 snail tracks in a very marked manner ; once 

 I followed such a track and found a snail at 

 its end that had met another coming from an 

 opposite direction, the two sharing a sudden 

 and ignominious death. 



It is astonishing what a distance snails will 

 travel. I have known them travel more than 

 half-way across my tennis court, in the 



