CH. VII] SNAILS AI^D SLUGS 233 



rustica, iii. 14 : " You must choose," he says, " a suitable 

 place out of doors and make a little moat all round the 

 ' cochlearium,' or you will lose all your snails. The spot 

 must not be exposed to the sun and should get heavy 

 dews. If this is not at hand, you must make such a place 

 as you find at the foot of rocks and mountains lapped by 

 streams and lakes, and lay on your water-main and arrange 

 the outflow so that it splashes around for some distance. 

 Their feeding will be very little trouble to you. They live 

 a long time, and when you want to get them ready for 

 market you must throw in a few bay leaves and scatter 

 some bran over them. And so let the cook cook them alive 

 or dead, he generally does not know which." 



Apicius, the author of a Roman cookery-book, supplies 

 the following recipe : " First catch your snails ; wipe them 

 over with a sponge ; take off the lid [epiphragm] so that 

 they may come out ; put into their jar milk and salt for 

 one day, for the remaining days milk only ; keep them 

 scrupulously clean by hourly removal of the excrement: 

 when they have fed to such an extent that they cannot go 

 back into their shells, fry them in oil." 



At the present day snail-farms, or Escargotieres, are 

 maintained in various parts of Europe, nor are they 

 entirely unknown in our own country. Darbishire de- 

 scribes one such establishment near Friburg in which some 

 60,000 to 80,000 Helix pomatia are fattened annually. 

 The snails are collected by the country folk and brought 

 to the wholesale farmer. , By him they are kept for two or 

 three months in a large meadow which is divided into 

 small squares by hoardings about a foot high. These 



