INSTINCT, INTELLIGENCE, AND USES 139 
so much resorted to, but they have some adherents 
among the natives of Mauritius, Guadeloupe, and 
Cambodia; even in France some of the freshwater 
Mussels are eaten in certain localities. 
Land Snails have been consumed from very early 
times. The yellow-banded Snail (Helix nemoralis) 
figures in the kitchen-middens, and the Romans, who 
were great snail-eaters, most probably inherited, and 
did not initiate the custom. In France great 
quantities of the larger Snails are eaten, and formerly 
certain annual Snail feasts were held in the North 
of England. Different kinds furnish repasts in 
various parts of the world. 
How far molluscs may have been cultivated for 
food in very early days cannot now be guessed, but 
in Roman times a certain Sergius Orata, about 
roo B.c., established vivaria for Oysters on the 
Lucrine Lake, near Baiz, and obtained much 
notoriety for his produce. To-day Oyster farms 
are abundant in France, England, and the United 
States. To the Romans are also due the first 
“cochlearia,” or Snail farms, invented by Fulvius 
Herpinus, and in Central France, where the animal 
no longer lives, masses of the shells of the Roman 
Snail (Helix pomatia) mark the former sites of such. 
Similar farms are in use on the continent at the 
present day. 
Mollusca are further very largely used as bait in 
fishing. Slugs and Snails have also figured copiously 
