_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.