62 BRITISH MOLLUSKS. 



father resolved to try the experiment of a diet of Apple Snails. 

 Specimens had been transported from Italy some thirty years before 

 by an English nobleman, for the same purpose, to the range of hills 

 in the neighbourhood ot Beigate and Box Hill, in Surrey ; and as 

 they had bred abundantly, Mr. Barlow was induced to take a house 

 in that locality. The expressed mucilaginous juice of the snail was 

 administered to the patient, without his knowledge, in every con- 

 ceivable form. It was taken in jellies and conserves, in gravies and 

 with entremets of meats. In the course of a twelvemonth, the in- 

 vabd was entirely cured, and went to the Crimea, and is living at this 

 moment a strong hearty man. 



The shell is of a bight globose form, very limited in its variation 

 of colour, which is a Hght fawn, encircled with three rather distant 

 bands of darker hue. The axis of the whorls shows a distinct umbi- 

 licus, but it is almost concealed from view by the broadly reflected 

 dilation of the columellar margin at its junction with the body-whorl. 

 The close-set longitudinal striae of the whorls, puckered at the su- 

 ture, and indicating accessions of growth, are not obscured, as in 

 JET. aspersa, by a shagreen of wrinkles ; the interstices between 

 them are decussated with regularity by delicately impressed spiral 

 lines. The animal is described as being neither so lively nor so 

 irritable as H. aspersa, but of great strength, carrying its shell vigo- 

 rously upright. Owing to its large size it has been a frequent object 

 of anatomical study, the most elaborate memoir being that of M. 

 Gaspard, of which Professor Bell published an abstract in the 

 ' Zoological Journal.' 



Helix pomatia, as already noticed, is partial in its distribution 

 in England, not occurring further north than Gloucestershire or 

 Wilts. It is also partial on the Continent. It is extremely abund- 

 ant in Germany ; while walking in the neighbourhood of Stolzenfels 

 on one occasion, after a shower, I could scarcely step for some dis- 

 tance without fear of treading on one. It is also common in the 

 north of France, while in the south the species is unknown. It has 

 not bred in the United States ; and attempts made to breed it in the 

 north of England and Ireland have proved unsuccessful. The 

 diaphragm secreted by this species during the time of hybernation, 

 is unusually soHd and calcareous, and it is supposed by some writers 

 that Linnaeus derived his name pomatia, not from pomum an apple, 

 but from Trapa a Hd. The author of the ' Sy sterna Naturse ' seldom, 

 however, went to the Greek lexicon for his derivatives. 



