SNAILS 



209 



The slugs and snails form the family Heliciclce of lung-breathing 

 molluscs, many of which live in forests, or at least in and under 

 bushes. They have a rather thin, spirally coiled, conical, globose, or discoidal shell, 

 and dwell in shady places in hedges, among leaves, etc. More than a thousand 

 different species are known, and the group is found all over the world. The 

 largest central European representative of the group is the great Roman or apple 

 snail {Helix pomutia), which has a thick globose shell of If inches in height, 

 of a very pale brown colour with indistinct reddish brown bands. This 

 snail, which ascends mountains up to 5000 feet, lays from thirty to forty 

 eggs of the size of a pea, which develop in twenty-six days ; the young taking a 

 whole year to grow to their full size. In autumn these snails close the aperture of 

 the shell for hibernation with a door of calcified mucus; and in this state, after 

 they have been kept fasting for some time, they are frequently used as food, 

 although in summer 

 they are too slimy to 

 be eaten. They form 

 in many continental 

 countries, in the south 

 of Germany for in- 

 stance, an important 

 article of trade, especi- 

 ally during Lent; and 

 in some districts the 

 peasants breed them 

 in special gardens and 

 fatten them with 

 cabbage-leaves. They 

 are believed to have 

 been introduced by 

 man into many 

 countries where they 

 are not indigenous, 

 as Great Britain and Livonia 

 parts of northern Germany, but to the Romans is generally given the credit of 

 acclimatising them in Britain. 



The tree-snail (H. arbustorwrri), which is also found in hedges and gardens, 

 and inhabits the Alps up to 7000 feet, is brown in colour, dappled and 

 streaked with a dark band along the middle of each whorl. The wood-snail 

 {H. nerrwralis) is frequent in many localities, but varies much in coloration. It 

 is about an inch in diameter, and may be distinguished from the garden-snail 

 (//. hortevsis) by having the lip of the shell brown instead of white. The group 

 of Bui i mi, although rare in central Europe, is represented by numerous types in 

 South America. One European species (Buliminus obscurus) lives beneath leaves 

 and moss, on rocks and walls, and on the trunks of trees, where it is never 

 conspicuous owing to its coating itself with mud, and thus acquiring the appearance 

 of an excrescence on the bark. When the mud is cleared off, the shell is found to 



VOL. I. Ji 



THE APPLE-SNAIL. 



The monks seem to have brought them to many 



