78 MEDICINAL MOLLUSCA. 



sometimes the shell is pricked through with a large pin to 

 enable the patient to suck the oozing liquor. You may see 

 considerable quantities of Helix pomatia and aspersa sold in 

 Covent-garden market for this purpose ; and still greater 

 quantities are sold in all the large continental cities. In the 

 Isle of Bourbon, the Navicella elliptica is commonly used to 

 make a soup for the sick ; and in the same and adjacent islands 

 the animal of Melania amurula, which is very bitter, passes 

 for an excellent remedy in the dropsy. The " piedra de las 

 ojos," which are merely worn fragments of shells, are consi- 

 dered in some parts of South America as the most extraor- 

 dinary production of their coasts, being, in the philosophy of 

 the natives, both a stone and an animal. These fragments 

 are from one to four lines in diameter, with a plain and a 

 convex surface, and when excited by lemon juice move in 

 proportion as the carbonic acid is disengaged. Placed in the 

 eye, the pretended animal turns on itself, and expels every 

 other foreign substance that may have been accidentally in- 

 troduced. At the salt-works of Araya, and at the village of 

 Maniquares, they were offered to Humboldt and his fellow- 

 traveller by hundreds, and the natives were not only earnest 

 to shew them the experiment of the lemon-juice, but wished 

 to put sand into their eyes that they might themselves try 

 the efficacy of the remedy.* The same custom and super- 

 stition is said to prevail in Guernsey ; and in the olden time 

 did prevail in the Highlands of Scotland. The Rev. John 

 Frazer, writing of the year 1702, says; "Snail-stones are 

 much commended for the eyes ; and I'm confident their cool- 

 ing vertue is prevalent against pains bred by a hott cause : 

 ther origine is thus, some excrementitious parts avoided by 

 these creatures, condensed by the circumjacent air, and 

 turned to a round figure by the frequent turning ; but this 

 is observable, that some of them, speciallye snaile-stones, has 

 the exact figure of the snail."-)- — But what are all these to 

 the use which the pretty maidens of merry England and of 

 Ireland J apply the snail in a May morning, when, in the 



* Pers. Narrative, ii. 288 — 290. New Eng. Journ. of Med. and Surgery, 

 v. 192. 



t Analecta Scotica, i. 119. But the "Snail-stone" of Scotland, to which 

 many mysterious virtues were long ascribed, was an artificial ornament 

 made of blue glass. See Llwyd in Phil. Trans, ahridg. vi. 21. Mr. 

 Frazer's snail-stones are clearly different. 



X " The Drutheen, which is supposed to possess the power of revealing 

 the name of a sweetheart, is a small white slug, or naked snail ; and it is 

 the common practice of boys and maids, on May morning, to place one on a 

 piece of slate, lightly sprinkled with flour or fine dust, covering it over with 

 a large leaf, when it never fails to describe the initial of the one-loved name." 

 — Choker's Irish Fairy Legends, ii. 215. 



