OF HARTING. 317 



Of the Apple Snail (Helix Pomatia), the largest of 

 British snails, we have never met with a living example 

 here, and the only reason we have for assuming that 

 it ever did exist in the neighbourhood, is the discovery 

 of a dead shell of the species in one of the Lady Holt 

 covers many years back. Since then a tender solicitude 

 for the length of our catalogue of natural productions 

 has induced us to import some fifty or sixty specimens 

 of this fine snail into the parish. These were obtained 

 from Preston Candover, where about thirty years back 

 they were plentiful, and we made an impartial dis- 

 tribution of them between Padswood Copse, the Warren, 

 the hedgerows on either side of Love Lane, and Lever's 

 Copse at the foot of the Fore Down ; but the experi- 

 ment to establish them here signally failed ; we never 

 saw one of them afterwards, and if, as we suspect, the 

 hedgehog found them toothsome, the fact speaks 

 volumes for the discriminating palate of our erinaceous 

 friend, who in this instance only emulated certain 

 epicures among our Gallic neighbours. With the latter 

 a dish of Escargots is a recognised dainty, and in the 

 summer months may be obtained at the restaurants in 

 many large towns in France as readily as whitebait at 

 Greenwich in the proper season. Some idea may be 

 formed of the estimation in which these snails are held 

 there, from the fact that Burgundy and Champagne 

 send no less than a hundred thousand of them daily 

 to Paris alone. In our younger days we have seen 

 gangs of Breton sailors, from the merchant craft in the 

 Seine, collecting them in the gardens and orchards on 

 the banks of the river, in utter defiance of the rude 

 reception they were certain to meet with if discovered 

 in their occupation by the owners of the premises on 

 which they trespassed. The hostile attitude of the 

 latter, on such occasions, was no doubt stimulated by a 

 tolerably well founded apprehension that the fruits 

 then in season might offer too great a temptation to 

 the conchologists to be resisted. A few pages back 



