SNAIL-EATING.
(Vol. iii., p. 221.)
Snail-eating is by no means uncommon. When I was a youth I took a dozen snails every morning to a lady who was of a delicate constitution, and to whom they were recommended as wholesome food. They were boiled, and mixed up with milk. They were the common snail, usually found about old garden walls. A friend of mine, in walking round his garden, was in the habit of picking the snails off his fruit-trees and eating them raw. He was somewhat fastidious, for I have seen him take a snail, put it to his tongue, and reject it as not of a good flavour, and select another more agreeable to his taste. We are strange creatures of habit, especially in our feeding. I am fond of oysters, muscles, and cockles; but I do not think anything could induce me to taste a snail, a periwinkle, or a limpet.
B. H.
Snail-eating.—This practice is very general in Italy. While residing near Florence, my attention was often attracted by a heap of fifty or one hundred very clean, empty, snail-shells, in a ditch, or under a bush; and I indulged in many vain speculations, before I could account for so strange a phenomenon.
One day, however, I happened to meet the contadina coming out of my garden with a basket on her arm; and from her shy, conscious manner, and an evident wish to avoid my seeing the contents, I rather suspected she had been making free with my peaches. To my surprise, however, I found that she was laden with the delicious frutta-di-terra (sometimes so called, as the Echinus, so common along the Italian coast, is called frutta-di-mare); and thinking that she had been collecting them simply from regard to my fruit and vegetables, I thanked her for her kind services. But she understood me ironically, and, with a good deal of confusion, offered to carry them to the kitchen, apologising most elaborately, and assuring me that she would on no account have taken them, had not our cook told her that we despised them, and that she would no doubt be welcome. I asked her what in the world she intended to do with them? and, with a look of amazement at my question, even surpassing mine at her reply, she informed me that her brother and his wife had come to pay them a visit, and that, with my kind permission, she would thus treat them to "una bellissima cena." She had collected about three quarts, during a search of two hours. The large brown kind only are eaten. Among the poor they are generally esteemed a delicacy, and reputed to be marvellously nutritious.
Nocab.