46 



EDIBLE SNAILS. 



most digestible of all, but the H. pomatia (Fig. 7), is tlie 

 best known and most commonly found in the market.* 

 The Romans took great pains in rearing these snails, which 

 that luxurious people were wont to indulge in, not from 



any peculiar relish for 

 p ' such tasteless food, but 



from a belief in their 

 aphrodisiaical virtue, 

 deduced, as Lister con- 

 jectures, from a know- 

 ledge of the seat of 

 their reproductive or- 

 gans. ■}■ The snails 

 were kept in sties call- 

 ed cochlearia, J " and 

 those had their distinct 

 partitions, for sundry 

 sorts of them : that 

 the white, which came from the parts about Reate, should 

 be kept apart by themselves : the Illyrian (and those were 

 chiefe for greatnesse), alone by their selves : the Africans 

 (which were most fruitful), in one several : and the Solitanes 

 (simply the best of all the rest) in another. Nay more 

 than that, he had a devise in his head to feed them fat, 

 namely, with a certain paste made of cuit and wheat meale, 

 and many other such like : to the end forsooth, that the glut- 

 ton's table might be served plentifully with home-fed and 

 franked great winkles also. And in time, men grew to take 

 such a pride and glory in this artificial feat, and namely, in 

 striving who should have the biggest, that in the end one of 

 their shels ordinarily would containe eighty measures called 

 Quadrants, if M. Varro say true, who is mine author." § 

 You need no longer hold up to imitation the temperance of* 

 the younger Pliny, whose supper consisted of only three 

 snails, two eggs, a barley-cake, a lettuce, sweet wine, and 

 snow ; but, alas ! participating in that degeneracy which is 



* Philippi mentions Helix naticoides, H. aspersa and H. vermiculata, as 

 forming articles of common food in Sicily. Enum. Mollusc. Sicil. p. 126. 



t Lister in Phil. Trans, an. 1669, p. 1013. Exer. Anat. de Coch. 146. 

 Hist. Anim. Ang. 112. 



+ The cochlearia were invented by Fulvius Hirpinus, a little before the 

 civil war with Pompey the Great. — Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ix. cap. 82. 



§ Holland's Plinie, i. 267. Cuvier Hist. des. Sc. Nat. i. 227. The large 

 species is presumed to have been the Achatina perdrix of Lamarck, a native 

 of Africa. 



" Stewed shrimps and Afric cockles shall excite 

 A jaded drinker's languid appetite." — Horace. 



