March, 1906 AOE Rte ANY HOMES. AND GARDENS 
Po ks wer ae 
Cooking the Snails 
tact with the air. 
They grow so rapid- 
ly that they are 
ready for market in 
October, that is to 
Saye six or eight 
weeks after hatch- 
ing. Many of the 
young snails are de- 
stroyed by birds, 
toads and insects. 
In most parts of 
France snails were 
formerly gathered 
in vineyards and 
hedgerows; now 
they are bred and 
fattened in special 
establishments called 
escargotiéres, or 
snaileries. This pic- 
the mollusk encounters an obstacle in its path 
it proceeds to lay eggs. \ccording to 
yuy 
two hundr« d squart 
meters is sufficient for ten thousand snail 
Larbalétrier, a plot of 
The ground iS plowed deeply, and on a 
rainy evening in March or April the snails 
are introduced and covered with from two 
to four inches of moss or straw, which 1 
sprinkled when it becomes too dry. 
Under the influence of heat and moistu 
the mollusks bury themselves in the ground 
yr take refuge in the bushes until the bre 
ing season. Their food, supplied daily, con- 
sists of lettuce, romaine, cabbage and vin 
leaves, or, in default of these, grass. But 
the food must be appetizing, for snails ar 
very fastidious. In consideration of thei 
nocturnal habits it is spread in the snailery 
shortly before sunset. A few herbs—chervil, 
mint, parsley and savory—are planted in the 
inclosure to improve the flavor of the 
snails. It was formerly believed that these 
aromatic herbs at- 
tracted the snails, 
which were sup- 
posed to have an 
exquisitely keen 
scent. But, accord- 
ing to the recent re 
searches of Young, 
of Geneva, though 
snails perceive odors 
by means of the en- 
tire surface of the 
body outside of the 
shell, their sense of 
smell is poorly de- 
veloped. Young has 
even proved, by re 
peated experiments, 
that the limit o 
olfactory perception 
does not exceed six- 
teen inches. Beyond 
turesque industry, Preparation of the Force Meat with Which the Shell are Filled this distance a snail 
however, is two 
thousand years old, as we have already 
noted. Columella and Varro have _ be- 
queathed us some information of the ‘“‘coch- 
learum vivaria’’ of Rome, which occupied 
large spaces entirely surrounded by water. 
Here, on beds of moss and grass, the 
fortunate mollusks enjoyed a cool and salu- 
brious climate produced by the spray of foun- 
tains. The French snaileries of the Yonne, 
the Lura, the Cote d’Or, the Rhone and the 
Aube, and those of Wiurtemberg and the 
Swiss canton of Appenzell are not better 
managed than their Roman prototypes. 
A snail park is made by selecting a plot of 
damp and calcareous soil and inclosing it 
with smoothly planed boards, coated with 
tar, and held in place by outside stakes 
strong enough to withstand the force of the 
wind. The boards must penetrate the soil 
to a depth of eight inches, at least, and at 
the level of the ground they must have a 
sort of shoulder, or shelf, to prevent the 
snails from burrowing under them. When 
So eo 
eo Fae hd 
<< — BM ) a ee ee ee ee es ee ee ee a FA} Fa 
i) 
.” or Epiphragm from the Mouth of the Shell 
