GEG LAND AND FRESH-WATER MOLLUSKS. ~ 
that whatever is disgusting and nauseous, must 
necessarily be fraught with healmg virtues. 
Dr. Gray writes, that “the glassmen of New- 
castle once a year have a snail-feast, and that they 
generally collect the snails themselves in the 
fields and hedges the Sunday before the feast.” 
The working population of Lancashire have a 
reputation for the hike custom. 
In the South of France an annual snail-feast 
is held on Ash-Wednesday, on which day there 
is a very large consumption of the very unsub- 
stantial and indigestible flesh of snails. Vendors 
are seen standing in the streets with great ham- 
pers full of Helix aspersa and H. nemoralis ; the 
former of the two is preferred. They are sold at 
the rate of 25 centimes, or 24d., per 100. From 
seven to eight thousand of H. aspersa form 
part of the provisions of a ship leaving the port 
of Bordeaux for a long voyage. Nearly all the 
snails that constitute so important a part in the 
live stock of ships come from one commune, 
that of Cauderan, which is infested by them. 
Mr. J. G. Jeffreys, quoting Lister, writes that 
“the fluid which exudes so copiously from the 
body of H. aspersa when pricked, was used in 
his time in bleaching wax for artistic purposes, 
as well as in making a firm cement, mixed with 
the white of an egg.’? In the London streets I 
have frequently seen a man vending an article, 
