HELICIDiE. SNAIL. 
15 
poor country people eat no other meat all the year^ ex- 
cept at E aster 
Dr. Ebrard adds that, during the famine of 1816 and 
1817, snails were most valuable articles of food to the 
inhabitants of Central France ; again, that from the 
coasts of Saintonge and Aunis, snails have been for a 
long time exported in casks to Senegal and the Antilles; 
and that M. Valmont-Bomard saw the peasants, in the 
neighbourhood of La Rochelle, gathering an immense 
quantity of small snails, to send to America, in casks 
filled with branches of trees, crossed again and again, so 
that the snails might be able to attach themselves firmly, 
and not be much shaken during the transport. 
Helix aperta, which is not known in England, but is 
figured in Messrs. Forbes and Hanley^s ^British Concho- 
logy,^ from a dead specimen having been found in Guern- 
sey, in 1839, is highly esteemed amongst real connois- 
seurs of snails, and is found in Provence (where it is 
called by the Provenjaux tapada^ tapa^ ov tapet)y in some 
parts of Italy, and in the islands of the Mediterranean. 
M. Moquin-Tand on tells us that vessels regularly visited 
the coasts of Liguria, in search of considerable quantities 
of Helix aperta, for food for the higher classes at Rome."^ 
The shell is of a yellowish-olive colour and nearly translu- 
cent, thin, and of an ovate-globular form. It has a large 
mouth, with the peristome white, and the whorls four in 
number. In the heat of summer and during the winter 
this Helix, like Helix pomatia, buries itself in holes in 
the ground, shutting up the aperture of its shell with a 
white calcareous epiphragm. Two of the specimens 
we have in our collection, which were sent from Italy, 
still have this epiphragm very perfectly preserved, and it 
* At Eome, Helix aperta is called Monacello. 
