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CHAPTER IV. 



AN APOLOGY FOB SNAILS. 



" Aii inadvertent step may crush the snail 

 That crawls at evening in the public path ; 

 Yet, he that has humanity, forewarned, 

 Will step aside, and let the reptile live." 



IT will be better, perhaps, to begin by frankly confessing that 

 we have ourselves a great partiality for Snails. We admire 

 them, make pets of them, and feel rather pleased than otherwise ; 

 therefore, when they make themselves at home in our little back 

 garden, which is very neat and pretty, the neighbours say, 

 notwithstanding. 



The admission we have made will be a very damaging one, 

 no doubt, in the estimation of all grave, sober-minded people ; 

 and we are not sure that it is altogether politic to be so forward 

 with the avowal. But as it is, we openly acknowledge the 

 predilection. Nay, more than that, we are prepared to defend 

 it ; and make bold to assert that there is not one person in a 

 hundred always excepting, of course, market-gardeners and 

 amateur floricultural monomaniacs who, if he (or she) were 

 better acquainted with the Snail fraternity, would not regard 

 them with something more of kindly tolerant feeling, even if 

 they did not go the length that we do, of positively admiring 

 them. 



The truth is, we have been so led away by prejudice and 

 foolish antipathy against the little familiar things that are 

 constantly before our eyes in fields, and gardens, and hedgerows, 

 that we assume, as a matter of course, there can be nothing 

 worth knowing about them ; and if they at all incommode us, or 

 do the slightest harm to our possessions, they are straightway 

 doomed to a pitiless extermination. But surely it is high time 

 that we began to understand these matters a little better. If 

 there be one thing more than another that the researches of our 



