Benefits. 261 
the juice of shelled snails, though they were, and perhaps are, 
remedies in use among the lower orders, owing their popu- 
larity to a vulgar creed, that whatever is digusting and nauseous 
must necessarily be fre aught with healing Sethe 
But, if poor in medicines of real efficacy, molluscous ani- 
mals furnish several which are powerful through a super- 
stitious faith. In South America, the P7etros des los Oozes, 
which are worn fragments of shells, are believed to be endowed 
with a sort of intelligence i in removing extraneous bodies from 
the eyes, and are in consequence looked upon as something 
very wonderful. * The druggists of Venice sell the testaceous 
operculum of a species of Turbo, the Umbilicus Véneris, as 
they call it, to cure the cramp, which it does miraculously, by 
being tied to the limb. In England the rustic maiden can 
read her fortune in the mmenen of a snail: 
“ Last May-day fair I search’d to find a snail, 
That might my secret lover’s name reveal. 
Upon a gooseberry bush a snail I found, 
For always snails near sweetest fruit abound. 
I seized the vermin, home I quickly sped, 
And on the hearth the milk-white embers spread. 
Slow crawl’d the snail ; and, if I right can spell, 
In the soft ashes mark’d a curious L. 
Oh! may this wondrous omen lucky prove ! 
For L is found in Lubberkin and Love.” Gay. 
And, in my younger days, I remember the country school- 
boy, while strolling, with satchel on his back, from his hamlet 
to the neighbouring village, would stay to cou by doggerel 
rhymes, the black slug (Zimax ater) to protrude its ee 
and, having seized them according to the prescribed rules, 
fo) 
Ww pula go on his way with a gayer heart and elevated hopes. 
Ay, and I have envied the better fortune of my fellow who 
could tell, by the sounding of his whelk, of storms at sea, and 
of the fluxes of the tide! For, with Wordsworth, I have 
seen 
“ A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp’d shell ; 
To which, in silence hush’d, his very soul 
Listen’d intensely, and his countenance soon 
Brighten’d with joy ; for murmurings from within 
Were heard, — sonorous cadences whereby, 
To his belief, the monitor express’d 
Mysterious union with its native sea.” 
These notices you may think trifling, and somewhat out of 
place ; but I have ever taken an interest in the superstitious 
* The same superstition is said to prevail in Guernsey. 
