Cochelae terrestres.
SNails are little esteemed of us in England, but in Barbarie, Spaine, and Italy they are eaten as a most dainty, wholesome, nourishing, and restoring meat. Let us beware when, and in what sort, we use them; for * 1.1they are naught whilst they feed, but towards winter having scoured themselves from all excrements, and batled themselves fat with sleep, then are they whole∣somest: also if they feed in woods or in gardens full of Physick-hearbs, they are strong both of smell and taste and dangerous to eat of. They desire of all other herbs to feed of deffadills and asphodils; but then they are not so good, as those that feed upon other herbs and fruits, but especially upon Dew-berries. In Cales and Spain they feed chiefly upon orenge flouers, which makes them very pleasant in eating. In the Islands of * 1.2Majorca and Minorca, they never come out of their caves, but live by sucking one anothers shell, hanging together like a gluster of grapes; which no doubt are of a purer substance then ours, that suck and feed upon all herbs. Fulvius Hilpinus not long before the civil * 1.3war betwixt Caesar and Pompey, made in his garden several snail-parks (as I may call them) keeping every kind by themselves; there might one find the white snails of Reate, the gray and great snails of Illyricum; the fruitful snails of Africa, and the Solitan snails, most