Mrs. Merton was about to reply, when Agnes’s attention was attracted by some curious-looking wicker-work cages which lay in a heap at the end of the terrace on which they had been walking. “What can these be?” cried she. A boy who was lying beside them, and tying them together with pieces of string, looked up in her face, without disturbing himself, and answered, “they are lobster-pots.”
“Pots!” repeated Agnes: “I think they are more like baskets than pots. And why are these snails put in them?”
“They are the bait,” said the boy, without even looking at her this time.
“Do look, mamma,” said Agnes, “what enormous snails! And here is a large flat snail like that Susan found for me in the kitchen, only it is such a great deal larger.”
Fig. 17.
The Horny Snail
(Planorbis corneus).
“That shell was placed among the snails by Linnæus,” said Mrs. Merton; “but it is now called Planorbis, or the coil-shell. Look what a horny, almost transparent, substance it has; indeed, I believe it is sometimes called the Horny Snail. It does not live in the sea; but it is found in ditches, or any stagnant water that is nearly dry in summer. When attacked, it emits a dark reddish liquid, to hide itself from its enemies, by rendering the water so dark that it cannot be seen.”
“How clever!”
“Instinct teaches many molluscous animals to do the same. The violet snail emits a beautiful lilac fluid; and the cuttle-fish a liquid as black as ink. But this is not all that I have to tell you about the Planorbis: it lays its eggs upon a leaf, where they look like those of the spider, or of some kind of insect.”
“Look mamma! Here is another shell, quite different from the Planorbis.”