l6o JOURNAL OF CONCHOLOGY, VOL. 9, NO. 5, JANUARY, 1899. 



how to prepare them as medicine ; these directions show how gener- 

 ally some of our molluscs were used for food. The following are 

 rather quaint specimens of these recipes :— " Snales which bee in 

 shells beat together with bay salt and mallowes, and laid to the 

 bottomes of your feet and to the wristes of your handes, before the 

 fit commeth, appeaseth the ague." A decoction of snails : " Take 

 garden snails, cleansed from their shells, number twelve ; red cow's 

 milk, new, two pounds, boil to a pound ; and add rose-water, an 

 ounce, sugar-candy, half-an-ounce." For a consumption, a drink is 

 recommended made from snails, hyssop, milk, etc., and directions 

 given to " drink this water two or three times a day, a quarter of a 

 pint at a time ; it has done good "; and in another recipe, snails are 

 to be taken prepared in broth, ten, fifteen or any " number of snails 

 to twenty, as the person's stomach can bear with." 



A clergyman has recently sent me word that he considers an appli- 

 cation of the slime of snails as almost the only cure for eczema. A 

 child in his village suffered fearfully from this complaint, and the 

 mother allowed the slime of snails to be rubbed on the affected parts, 

 and after two applications the child was perfectly cured ! I can my- 

 self vouch for apparent relief having been given to the unpleasant 

 result of midge bites, by allowing a snail to crawl over the inflamed 

 part of the arm, as this has been tried in my own garden with a most 

 satisfactory result. This brings me to the close of the second part of 

 my subject, and what I have said may, I think, show that some of our 

 slugs and snails may be of some value as human food and medicine, 

 and I hope some of our members may experiment further to prove 

 that these animals may be utilized so as to benefit man in this way. 



III. — As food of other animals. 



Here we have perhaps the most important uses of mollusca, espe- 

 cially as the principal food of many of our most valued wild animals, 

 tame and wild birds, and fresh-water fish. A case was brought to my 

 notice only a short time ago where two young tame pigeons which had 

 just been feeding in a meadow were killed and their crops were found 

 to be distended by a mass of Limntza truncatula. This is a dangerous 

 little mollusc to the farmer, as it has been proved to be the host of the 

 Liver Fluke (Fasciola hepatica), the well-known internal parasite which 

 has caused so much disease and destruction to our flocks of sheep. 

 Whilst on the other hand, the finest mutton, according to Borlase, 

 comes from pastures and downs where in the early mornings sheep eat 

 with the grass the small Helices and other snails crawling upon it, 

 which he states "yield a most fattening nourishment to sheep." Helix 

 hispida and Cochlicopa lubrica have been found in the crops of young 

 sparrows, and H. caperata in the crop of a wood-pigeon. Fowls and 



