174 THE EVOLUTIOMST AT LARGE. 



seldom go out for a walk without a few pill- 

 boxes in my pocket, in case I should happen 

 to hit upon any remarkable specimen. Now 

 here in the tall moss which straggles over an 

 old heap of stones I have this moment 

 lighted upon a beautifully marked shell of 

 our prettiest English snail. How beautiful 

 it is I could hardly make you believe, unless 

 I had you here and could show it to you ; 

 for most people only know the two or three 

 ugly brown or banded snails that prey upon 

 their cabbages and lettuces, and have no 

 notion of the lovely shells to be found by 

 hunting among English copses and under 

 the dead leaves of Scotch hill-sides. This 

 cyclostoma, however, I must trouble you 

 with a Latin name for once is so remark- 

 ably pretty, with its graceful elongated spiral 

 whorls, and its delicately chiselled fretwork 

 tracery, that even naturalists (who have per- 

 haps, on the whole, less sense of beauty than 

 any class of men I know) have recognised 

 its loveliness by giving it the specific epithet 



