148 
THE RAT. 
to tlieir digestive regions, and then eagerly look out for 
more. 
Not long ago, a gentleman living at Maidstone cauglit, 
by means of a net in a pond at Millgate, fifteen species of 
pike. One of them measured three feet five inches in 
length and twenty inches round, and weighed twenty pounds. 
When it was opened, they took from its inside another 
pike, measuring fifteen inches in length, and weighing a 
pound and a half ; besides a great toad. Then, upon open- 
ing the extracted fish, they found a smaller pike, and a 
large sermulot. Thus the poor sermulot had been twice 
swallowed by these ravenous tyrants of the waters. 
By the generality of mankind, the snail, as an article of 
food, is looked upon with the same degree of loathing as the 
detested sermulot ; still we find our Gallic neighbours 
feed upon them with, the same gout as they occasionally do 
upon the frog or the rat. In truth, snail-eating in Paris has 
become a kind of luxury. In a return of the statistics of 
Paris, it is stated that snails have become quite as fashion- 
able an article of diet as they were in the days of ancient 
Home. There were then in the city of Paris fifty-eight eating- 
houses, and one thousand two hundred private families, where 
snails were eaten daily, as a delicacy, by between eight and 
ten thousand individuals. The monthly cost for snails in 
Paris was estimated at half a million of francs. The market- 
price of the great vineyard snails w^as from two shillings to 
two and sixpence per hundred, while those from the hedges, 
woods, and forests, only fetched from one and sixpence 
to two shillings per hundred. The return then states that 
the proprietor of the snailery of Dijon realized seven 
thousand francs a year by the sale of his snails. 
Now let us reduce this to something more easy of com- 
prehension. In the first place, we will set down the snail- 
reaters at ten thousand ; secondly, we will calculate the cost 
according to the standard of English money, and then we 
>shall ascertain the expense, and the average number of snails 
^ach individual consumes daily. Now half a million of francs 
is rather better than £20,833 sterling. In the next place 
it costs each individual, on the average, about £2. 10$. per 
lunar month, that is, 10s. 6d. per week ; and if we calculate 
the snails at two shillings per hundred, and allow sixpence 
