Our British Snails

Part 1

Frontispiece.

Canon Horsley in his study examining a rare variety of whelk (var. Babylonica) from a stall in the Walworth Road. It is now in the South Kensington Museum.]

OUR BRITISH SNAILS

BY THE REV. CANON J. W. HORSLEY

AUTHOR OF "SOME FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS OF BIRDS," ETC.

LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C. BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET 1915

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Canon Horsley in his study examining a rare variety of whelk (var. Babylonica) from a stall in the Walworth Road. Frontispiece.

H. pomatia, half natural size 11

Dextral H. aspersa and H. pomatia 13

Love-darts of H. pomatia, much magnified 15

H. nemoralis at rest on hawthorn 17

Names of parts of shell and of body. Unio, Limnæa, Vivipara, and Arion 22

Body of snail and of slug 23

Three specimens of Arion ater, showing tentacles, breathing orifice, and slime gland 31

Testacella haliotidea 35

Helicella virgata at rest on thistle, natural size 45

Some of our smaller shells 47

Paludina contecta (two) and Limnæa stagnalis on water-weeds 57

Neritina and Ancylus 59

Freshwater mussel breathing and eating 61

OUR BRITISH SNAILS

It has been said that a child's education should begin thirty years before its birth, since what he is, or becomes, or does, depends largely upon what his parents were, and not solely on what he learns at home or in school, or from his companions and surroundings.

But the principle of what is called "atavism" shows us that the appearance, tastes, and character of a child's grandparents may reappear, even more than those of his parents; and that, therefore, his education begins sixty years before his birth.

My education, viewing me as a naturalist, began even earlier than that, for nearly all my ancestors of whom I know anything more than their names and abiding place were botanists or horticulturists, and I cannot recollect the time when I was not an observer of nature and a collector of the common objects of the field, the ditch, the seashore, the wood, and the cliff. My father died before I was four, and I have never had any remembrance of his words or looks, yet I remember his cutting down a tree in the shrubbery of his Kentish vicarage garden which forked curiously from the ground, and also of finding that handsome fungus which is scarlet flecked with white. This shows that the observation of the marvels and beauties of God's Green Bible, or Book of Nature, began early in me. The habits of observation, of comparison, and of method, are those which all naturalists and collectors must have; habits which are of great value in other ways as well. Firstly, one must have the seeing eye, and train it to notice what many people do not. (Get and read the old book, much read when I was young, called "Eyes and no Eyes.") Secondly, one must learn to observe the difference (sometimes very small, although important) between one object and others of the same family. Every one knows a wild rose by sight; but nearly every one would be surprised to hear that botanists make out twenty kinds of English wild roses, to say nothing of varieties and hybrids. In all departments of natural history a magnifying glass, for the dissection of inward parts, is necessary in many cases to separate two kinds which look alike. And, thirdly, if you want to make a collection, whether of dried plants, of insects, of shells, or of anything else, you must cultivate ways of order and method and neatness in the arrangement of your collection. And then your increased powers of observation, of comparison, and of method will stand you, and others, in good stead in higher matters of thought and action, and the virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude will all increase in you as you learn more about what is in man, what man should be, and how men should be treated. Let us take Fortitude for example. I have known boys who collected one kind of thing eagerly for a while, but soon got tired of it, and generally had little power of "sticking" to anything. On the other hand, I was once admiring the magnificent collection of shells owned by a middle-aged doctor, and asked him, "When did you begin to collect?" "When I was seven," was his answer. I should expect to find more Fortitude in that doctor's character than in that of a boy who collected "all things in turn and nothing long."

Yet I myself was middle-aged before I felt disgusted with myself, when gazing on a lad's collection of British land shells, that I should so long have been groping in hedges and ditches, and yet never have noticed the variety and the beauty of members of the snail family. (That lad, by the bye, is now a Professor in an American University, and a great authority on shells and other matters.) Since then I have gathered a complete collection of the British land and fresh-water shells, and a very large and valuable one of the Helicidæ--i.e. the family to which the common or garden snail belongs--of every country in the world; and have been President of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Part 2

I am now, therefore, writing about our British land shells, "slugs and snails" in common speech, with the hope that it may add a new interest to the country walks of lads and lasses.

I could show you a wall-case I made for a school. It contains specimens of all the British land shells with the exception of the slugs, which (with the exception of one of which I shall speak in its place) have no external or covering shell, although a small sort of shell, or at any rate some chalky grains, is found inside most of them. You would see that some are as small as a pin's head although full grown, and they would require a magnifying glass to distinguish one from the other. The largest is Helix pomatia (figured on pp. 11 and 12), which often goes by the name of "the edible snail." All snails are edible and nutritious; but this is the one cultivated in snail farms and sold as food abroad. Sometimes it is called "the Roman snail," from an idea, probably wrong, that it was introduced by Cæsar's soldiers, although as a matter of fact it is unknown in South Italy. Sometimes also it is called "the apple snail," partly because it is as large as a middle-sized apple, and partly because people thought the name pomatia came from the Latin pomum, "an apple," whereas it really comes from the Greek [Greek: pôma]. This word means a lid, or closing arrangement, and this mollusc makes a hard front door for itself when it hibernates, i.e. suspends active life and buries itself in the winter.

It is much to be regretted that in most cases scientific names fail to give much information to the young student, and in some cases they give none at all. The first or generic name is supposed to be formed from Greek, the second, or specific, from the Latin, but there are some hybrids and many mere "nonsense names" to puzzle beginners. Thus the slug Limax gets its name from limus, "mud"; but a scientist, who ought to have known better, when wanting a name for another kind of slug, transposed the initial letters and made Milax! Vitrina is a sensible and descriptive name, the Latin for glassy, given to a shell like thin glass; but the Greek Arion recalls either a certain musician or a certain swift steed, neither of whom naturally suggests a slug. For Balea at least four derivations have been suggested--none of them probable. Two facts concerning the life or appearance of a mollusc we should learn from its two names, but this is not the case with Agriolimax agrestis, which is by interpretation "the field slug inhabiting fields." Nor are we helped by the specific name virgata or striped when so many land shells are striped or banded, and still less by terrestris for one land shell when all land shells are terrestrial.

You would note, however, in this wall-case that the species are not many (a good many of the specimens are varieties, not separate species), and that, therefore, one can collect with the hope of speedily forming a complete collection without that inevitable absence of finality found when one collects postage stamps, or, still more, picture postcards, of which one might secure thousands, only to find that fresh thousands were brought out next year. Here, however, is no impossible ideal of perfection. There are but eighty-two land and forty-five freshwater shells in Britain.

Let us imagine we are starting for an afternoon snailing near London. Which way? To Oxshott? To Caterham? To the latter for choice, since it is on the chalk, whereas the former is on the sand. Snails require lime to make shells, and only on chalk or limestone will you find an abundance. Here, too, as at Box Hill, we shall find the big Helix pomatia, only found in a few English counties, and very local there. If we were very fortunate, we might find a sinistral, or "left-handed" specimen. In the case of the pomatia on the right hand there is shown the thick epiphragm which the mantle secretes before the mollusc hibernates. It hardens on exposure to the air like plaster-of-paris; but is not a true operculum, for that is a constant possession of the shells which have it. Opercula are mainly found in marine or fluviatile shells, and may be either horny (like the winkle) or stony. Amongst our British land shells Cyclostoma elegans and Acicula lineata alone have true opercula, though others form some thin epiphragm for the exclusion of cold air and enemies when they hibernate.

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