342 SNAILS. 



of creatures to accomplish a purpose, though he 

 knows not the directing means ; and it fortifies the 

 convictions of the believer, by giving him fresh 

 evidences of the universal superintendence of his 

 Maker, that even the slug and the snail, which are 

 arranged so low in the scale of creation, are yet, 

 equally with all, the object of his benevolence and 

 care. 



Connected with this subject of snails, a circum- 

 stance that took place in this neighbourhood is 

 brought to my remembrance, which discovered yet 

 latent in a few of us, notwithstanding our boasted 

 enlightenment, some leaven of the superstition of 

 darker ages ; and that any occurrence, not the event 

 of every coming day, may be made a subject of 

 wonder by the ignorant, and a means for the artful 

 to deceive the credulous. A little banded snail 

 (helix virgata) is a very common species on most 

 of our arid, maritime pastures, and the sheep-downs 

 of many inland places. It happened, from some 

 unknown cause, that those inhabiting a dry field 

 in an adjoining parish were in one season, a few 

 years ago, greatly increased, so as to become an 

 object of notice to a few, then to more, till at length 

 this accumulation was noised about as a super- 

 natural event. The field was visited by hundreds 

 daily from neighbouring villages and distant towns. 

 People who could not attend purchased the snails 

 at a halfpenny each ; and there were persons who 

 made five shillings a day by the sale of them. As 

 this increase of the creature was not certainly to be 



