USES — AS FOOD. 
425 
ordinary egg-spooii, while the other end was pointed for the purpose 
of hooking the snail from its shell. That its name Cochleare was 
derived from its usage may be inferred from the epigram by Martial : 
“ Sum cochleis lialjilis, seil nec minus utilis ovis, 
Namquid scis potius cur Cochleare vocer,” 
which Sir W. W. Gull has freely rendered as 
“ I am clever at Winkles, for eggs not less fit, 
Then why Tm called Cochleare question your wit.” 
IS^SP 
Fig. 740.— Cochleare, or Roman silver spoon, found at Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire, reduced 
to about half size of original (from Sir John Evans' collection). 
Fig. 741. — Cochleare, or Roman silver spoon, found near Woodchester, Gloucestershire, reduced 
to about half size of original (from Sir John Evans' collection). 
if 
Fig. 742. — Cochleare, or Roman silver spoon, found in the Thames, reduced to about half size of 
original (from Sir John Evans’ collection). 
In medifcval times snails were especially reserved in Denmark as a 
privileged article of food for the nobility and gentry. 
At the present day snails are largely used for human food in the 
warmer countries of Europe and elsewhere, more especially during the 
Lenten season, as the Roman Church permit their use as food during 
that jferiod. They are stated to contain 1 7 % of nitrogenous matter 
and to equal the oyster in nutritive propeities. 
Snails are to this day cultivated for food in various parts of Europe 
in special Snail-farms or Escargotih’es. One at Chalet St. Denis, near 
Fribourg, described bj'- Mr. R. D. Darbishire, which fattens sixty to 
eighty thousand Helix pomatia annually, consists of a large meadow 
fenced in by boards about a foot high. The snails annually needed to 
restock the farm are gathered every spring in the vicinity of the farm 
by the farm labourers and at once placed on one-half the meadow 
and left there until .Tuly, when they are transferred to the other half 
of the field, which is divided by hoardings, about a foot high, into 
numerous square spaces which are filled with moss, the snails being 
fed therein upon cabbage until they become very fat and of a greenish- 
