Snails eaten Abroad. 
449 
According to Bacon— 
“ the creatures that cast their shin are the snake, the viper, the grass¬ 
hopper, the lizard, the silk-worm, &c. Those that cast their shell are 
the lobster, the crab, the craw-fish, the hodmandod, or dodman, the 
tortoise, &c.” (Nat. Hist., century vii.) 
This word hodmandod has been explained by some writers 
to mean the shelled snail. 
Sir John Mandeville tells of some enormous foreign 
species 
“ There ben also in that contree [Siam] a kynde of snayles, that 
ben so grete that many persones may loggen him in here scelles as 
men wolde done in a litylle hous. And other snayles there ben, that 
ben fully grete, but not so huge as the other.’ 5 ( Travels , p. 193.) 
Garden snails were used in medicine as a remedy for 
an inward bruise. They also formed the foundation of a 
highly recommended “ soothing syrup.” They do not 
seem to have found favour in England as a delicacy for 
the table, but, according to Muffett, they were eaten in 
other countries. 
“ Snailes,” he writes, “ are little esteemed of us in England, but in 
Barbarie, Spaine, and Italy they are eaten as a most dainty, whole¬ 
some, nourishing and restoring meat.” (Healths Improvement , p. 190.) 
“ Pistol. Let us to France; like horse-leeches, 
. Leech, 
my boys: 
To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck.” 
{Henry V., ii. 3, 58.) 
The use of the Leech in surgery dates back to a very 
early period. The life of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syra¬ 
cuse, is reported to have been prolonged by means of this 
remedy. 
The soft-bodied marine animal, the sea-anemone, so 
well known to visitors to the sea-side, may be the creature- 
referred to by Du Bartas (p. 42) in the following lines:— 
" And so the sponge-spye warily awakes 
The sponges dull sense, when repast it takes.” 
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