2S 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE. 
Romans, Helix pomatia, is not found commonly in Britain, but 
Hdix adspersa is : and of this snail a French writer (M. Tou- 
px.Oj.ley i ells us that an average of 60,000 are consumed in four 
months of each year by a population of 18,000, and this number 
at 40 centimes the hundred (a price he has never known to vary) 
comes to 2,400 francs. According to his opinion which appears 
to he shared by many persons no other dish is so excellent as one 
of these snails arrange' d la bordelaise . These snails are 
co. lecmd in the He de Re duringthe vine harvest or afterwards, 
and the vine planter takes as much care to collect his snails as 
he does with his grapes. But M. Toupiolle did not find this 
same species of snail so palatable when collected in any other 
than his native part of France (the He de Re before mentioned). 
He concludes by saying that at the time of writing he had already 
laid in his Winter store of snails and his two meals a day con- 
sisted solely of this delicacy. 
Bm I must come nearer home for if I were to dilate to you 
upon the consumption of Mollusks in Europe I should exhaust 
my time and your patience. I know little of what the modern 
inhabitants of North America think of Molluska as an article of 
xxl oeyond the oyster and the clam which are both marine and 
occtvoion ally imported here, the former in ice and the latter 
m tins. But there is no necessity for any such importation as 
1m. e plenty of our own. of quality equal or superior to the 
ore Li article. Of oysters w r e have two or three kinds — I will 
ait , emme ._o call them species — the smaller of these are probably 
. y( ^ ^ Uu somehow one does not get them in town as good as 
iewmndo and elsewhere, and this may possibly be because 
^ t 1 as fresh. The poorer classes seem to have a 
prejudice against the oyster as food— yet in others of the West 
Blancis it is freely consumed, as we learn from a paper by 
T ’ >etlU 011 tae ec ^ e Molluska of Guadeloupe and Martinique. 
deheious mollusk 1 have ever eaten is Asaphis deflorata 
1 * n ^ eau ,s Paper as Capsa rugosci ; he does not think 
i y of it, possibly it may be on account of its abundance at 
