One hardly expected to find social feeling and affection in animals so low down in the scale of nature, but I do not know what else could have led my "Romans" to caress each other with their long horns by the hour together and always keep close to one another, twisting and curling their yielding bodies round each other in the most odd contortions. Our English snails hibernate in whole colonies for the winter, which also points to their affectionate and gregarious habits.
In lifting up some moss I once came upon some yellow, half-transparent eggs about as large as[p. 150] pearl barley, and wishing to know what they would prove to be I kept them in damp moss under a tumbler for about a fortnight, when, to my dismay, I found a grand colony of yellow slugs! and not a little was I teased about these interesting young people. I am afraid I must own they were given as a bonne bouche to my Virginian nightingale, who seemed highly to approve of this addition to his daily fare. Snails' eggs are nearly white and semi-transparent; the empty shells of young snails are very lovely when placed in a good microscope: the polariscope bringing out their exquisite prismatic tints.
The gardener one day brought in a testacella, or shelled slug. It fed upon earth-worms and was quite unlike the ordinary black or grey slug, of which we have, alas! countless thousands preying upon all the green things of the earth. This shelled slug was yellow, and seemed able to elongate its body very differently to any other species. The shell was quite small, a simple dome-shaped plate upon the anterior part of the body. I kept it for some weeks on damp moss under a tumbler, but it was often able to escape[p. 151] by flattening itself to a mere thread and then crawling under the rim of the tumbler, and at last I gave it liberty as a reward for its persevering efforts to obtain its freedom.
