THE GARDEN SNAIL. 75 



may have banqueted on the self-same herbage which sustained 

 the enormous bulk of that unwieldy monster. Later down, 

 in the classic days of Greece and Eome, the Snails were not 

 only known, but held in great repute, and regularly had the 

 honour of appearing at the tables of wealthy epicures, fresh from 

 contact with a silver gridiron. It was in those clays, indeed, 

 that the tribe derived the family name by which it has ever 

 since been known Helix, a spiral, being the name that was 

 given to the dainty morsel ; while the same term, metamor- 

 phosed into HeUcidce, new stands, all the world over where the 

 science of Zoology obtains, as the distinctive appellation of the 

 wide-spread family. All that by the way, however : what we 

 want to impress upon our readers is, that if there be any honour 

 attached to long descent and distinguished connections, then that 

 honour can fairly be claimed by the Snail family. 



It may be as well, too, to observe at once, that though the 

 representatives of the family which make themselves at home in 

 our fields and hedges have nothing particularly attractive in 

 their appearance, that is not by any means the case with those 

 branches of the family that reside abroad. In " foreign parts " 

 there are Snails to be found as far exceeding our own in delicacy 

 and beauty of colouring as there are birds and insects that excel 

 in brilliancy the winged tribes of our woods and fields. 



But these gaily-coloured individuals belong, of course, to the 

 rich pastures and the sunny skies of tropic regions ; and we do 

 not mean to call in their aid just yet, in order to make good our 

 position as to the claims of the family. Let us come back, 

 therefore, to the little fellow with the dusky spotted shell that 

 crawls across our garden-path, and to his somewhat prettier 

 companions of the hedgerow. We will introduce them in due 

 form Helix aspersa, the Garden Snail ; Helix nemoralis, the 

 yellow or banded Snail of the wayside banks and hedges. And 

 now observe that they make their way in the world by means 

 of an expanded disc or foot, which, as it is in close contact with 

 the ventral region of the body, has procured for the tribe a place 

 amongst the great class of Gastropods, or belly-footed Molluscs. 

 The foot itselt is a very curious organ, and consists of a nearly 

 uniform mass of muscular fibres, interwoven much in the same 

 way as those of the human tongue. The regular gliding motion 

 with which the common Snails crawl along, is due to a pair of 



