HELTCIDJ5. SNAIL. 221 



malady. They must gather them themselves, pound 

 them, and put them into little bags, which are worn 

 round the neck. As soon as the fever leaves them, 

 they bury their bags at the foot of the walls of the 

 chapel, and if they fail to perform this ceremony, the 

 fever returns. Mrs. Palliser adds, " we found quantities 

 of these bags made of course linen, lying half-buried 

 under the walls of the chapel." * 



I have been told that a large trade in snails is 

 carried on for Covent Garden market in the Lincoln- 

 shire Fens, and that they are sold at $d. per quart, 

 and upon further inquiry I find that snails are still 

 much used for consumptive patients and weakly 

 children; also as salves for corns put between ivy 

 leaves; and as food for birds. In the manufacture of 

 cream they are also much employed, bruised in milk 

 and boiled, and a retired milkman pronounced it the 

 most successful imitation known. 



It appears that not only are the Helicidce nourishing 

 to the human species, but that they have a beneficial 

 effect upon sheep, giving a richness to the flavour of 

 the mutton. Dr. Jeffreys, in his ' British Conchology/ 

 quotes the following passage from Borlase's ' Natural 

 History of Cornwall :' u The sweetest mutton is 

 reckoned to be that of the smallest sheep, which 

 usually feed on the commons where the sands are 

 scarcely covered with the green-sod, and the grass 

 exceedingly short ; such are the towens or sand-hillocks 

 in Piran-sand, Gwythian, Philne, and Senan Green, 

 near the Land's End, and elsewhere in like situations. 

 From these sands come forth snails of the turbinated 

 Hnds, but o,f different species, and all sizes, from the 



* ' Brittany and its Byeways.' 



