HELICID^. SNAIL. 
11 
snails as the largest^ the African as the most prolific ; 
others from Soletum, in the Neapolitan territory^ as the 
noblest and best. He also speaks of some as attaining 
to so enormous a size that their shells would contain 80 
pieces of money of the common currency,* that is to 
say, 80 quadrantes, the quadrans being a small copper 
coin I of an inch in diameter, about the size of a new 
sixpence, and -g- of an inch thick. This statement of 
Pliny ^s is really not so improbable as may appear at 
first sight, for on trying how many sixpences a usual- 
sized specimen of our largest snail. Helix pomatia, 
would hold, I find that about 40 could easily be put into 
it; and in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, in 
Paris, there are two specimens of this Helix from Mol- 
davia, nearly twice the size of the usual ones, measuring 
about inches in breadth, and which would easily hold 
80 sixpences. 
Fulvius Hirpinus studied the art of fattening them 
with so much success, that some of his snails would 
contain about 10 quarts. Pliny, in his letter to Sextus 
Erucius Clarus, says (complaining of his not fulfilling his 
engagement to sup with him) : — “ I had prepared, you 
must know, a lettuce apiece, three snails, two eggs and 
a barley cake, with some sweet wine and snow.^^f 
In Sir Gardner Wilkinson^s ' Dalmatia and Monte- 
negro,^ he tells us that the Illyrian snails mentioned 
by Pliny J are very numerous in Veglia or Veggia, the 
Cyractica of Strabo. 
Both Helix pomatia and Helix aspersa are eaten abroad 
to this day, and in England Dr. Gray says§ that the glass- 
* Kirby’s Hist, of Animals, etc., ‘Bridgewater Treatise,’ vol. i. p. 284. 
t Pliny’s Letters, p. 30, vol. i. J Pliny, ix. 56. 
§ Blackwood’s Edin. Mag., no. 561, July, 1862. 
