182 AMERICAN’ HOMES AND GARDENS 
March. 1906 
Snail Culture in Burgundy 
YG NATL culture was practiced by the Romans 
in the time of the civil war between Cesar 
and Pompey. ‘The largest snails came from 
Illyria and the finest from the promontory 
and served on a silver gridiron. During the 
Middle Ages this picturesque industry be- 
came established in Switzerland and the 
Danubian provinces. At this period, owing 
to the difficulty of communication, perishable 
articles of food were seldom brought into the 
interior of countries. For this reason, ac- 
cording to Dr. Langeron, the suburbs of 
Ulm sold annually ten million snails to the 
Austrian convents where the mollusks were 
eaten during the rigorous fast of Lent, under 
the name of fish. 
The provinces of Aunis and Saintonge ex- 
ported snails by the shipload, even to the 
West Indies, before the French Revolution, 
but snails did not appear on Parisian tables 
until a much later date. ‘They came into 
vogue in the following way: At the end of 
the eighteenth century travelers who had oc- 
casion to visit Burgundy were compelled to 
stop at the post inns, in several of which 
snails, gathered in the vineyards, were served 
to them. Among these inns, one in partic- 
ular—that of “Pere Vallée”, at Basson— 
rapidly acquired the universal esteem of the 
wine merchants of Bercy, who came every 
year to make their purchases in that district. These merchants 
very properly extolled the new dish that they had encountered 
in their travels and so their friends begged them to introduce 
it into the capital. In consequence, the ‘Black Hen” and the 
“Gray Hen’’—coaches plying between Paris and Auxerre 
—were commissioned to bring to the “Ville Lumiere”’ 
Washing and Brushing Snails 
of Salitum in Africa. Pliny, the Elder, 
ascribes to Fulvius Hirpinus the idea of 
imprisoning the mollusks in pens and fattening them with a 
paste composed of flour, boiled wine and other ingredients, 
and Petronius informs us that Trinalcion had snails broiled 
By Jacques Boyer 
the first baskets of snails that appeared in the Basson market. 
In 1830 three Bercy restaurants, the ‘““Marroniers,” the 
‘‘Penpliero” and the ‘‘Maison du Grand Saint Louis,” re- 
ceived several hundred snails each week, during the season. 
Twenty years later the trade in Burgundy snails was greatly 
increased by the establishment of railways. “Pere Vallée” 
had found imitators and the humble snail had permanently 
won the favor of French epicures. 
The appearance of the vineyard snail is too familiar to 
A Snailery at Dannemoine, near Tonnerre, Burgundy. Feeding the Snails 
with Lettuce, Cabbage and Grass 
need minute description. Naturalists class it among gaster- 
opod mollusks and call it Helix pomatia. 
Like the philosopher of antiquity, it carries its house with 
it, this house being a nearly flat spiral shell into which the 
animal withdraws completely when alarmed and in which 
it passes the winter. “The two superior tentacles, or “horns,” 
which adorn its head are longer than the in- 
ferior pair and bear organs of vision at their 
extremities. Ihe mouth contains a very hard, 
horny tongue and a masticating apparatus 
powerful enough to grind leaves, upon which 
the animal entirely subsists. This vege- 
tarian diet, however, nourishes muscles of 
astonishing strength. A snail can drag along 
with ease an object weighing seventy times as 
much as itself, to which it is attached in the 
manner of a cupping glass or “sucker,” 
while a horse can draw only twice its own 
weight. 
The snail is very prolific, laying 50 to 60 
eggs annually. The eggs, which are globular, 
gelatinous and inclosed in exceedingly thin 
calcareous shells, are deposited, in a coher- 
ing mass, in a smooth hole prepared for 
them in the ground, and hatch in twenty 
days. The newly hatched snails have very 
delicate shells, which harden quickly on con- 
