The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-09-06
II SNAIL TRADE.
A Good and Steady Demand for the Epi-
cures Delight.

A Good and Steady Demand for the Epi-
cures Delight.
How is the snail trade9" a Sun reporter
asked a Washington market fish dealer.
'As might be expected, the snail trade is
always a little slow, but the demand, such as it
is, is steady" the dealer replied. Then he
opened a peculiarly shaped box, with a number
Of shelves inside, in which there were thousands
Of snails crawling about, These he said,
come from Jersey. They grow fat in their
confinement, too
sAre they used in many restaurantslg
YOU'D be astonished to know the. number.
There are half a dozen snail farmers in Jersey
who do nothing else but rear and fatten them,
and we can sell every one that comes to the
market. Their use was introduced by foreign
ers, but now they are eaten by must epicures,
and their value as cure for consumption has
6eeon highly spoken Of They have a delicious
flavor when properly cooked
Are they cooked in downtown restaurants?r
They are, in several supply over a dozen
restaurants myself. They are chiefly in the
vicinity of Wall street and the Produce and Cot
ton exchanges
generally. The Kentish snail, = he said, $50
called because first noticed in that county in
England, has a rosy-red lip and delicate blush,
and is, perhaps, the finest and. most delicate.
Snails are regarded as first class food by many
epicures. The Dartmoor mutton is the most
excellent in favor in England, and few, proba-
bly,, are aware that it is to the snail we are in
debted for its rich flavor. Boriase, in his Natural
History of Cornwall, says that the sweetest
mutton he reckoned to be that of the smallest
sheep, which feed on the commons
and eat many snails. Snails were a very COM
mon dish with the Romans, who fed them up to
an enormous size in their shell preserves, and
they are still eaten in many parts of the conti-
nent of Europe. They are quite common in the
London markets, and may be bought at any
time in Covent Garden market from sixpence to
a shilling a quart The glassmen at Newcastle
indulge themselves in a small feast once a year,
and collect them from thetfelds the Sunday pre-
vious."
How long will they keep9a
Except Why they have the most extraordi-
nary powers sof vitality. Some of thom have
been known to live many years shut up in
boxes and drawers, and even affixed to tablets
as specimens. DIR. johnson, in his work
on conchology, speaks of some which had
formed a part of a collection belonging to
a Mr.. Simon, of Dublin, which revived
when placed in water, after having been
dried for a period Of fifteen years. Sew
eral years ago / read in Silliman's journal
that some men engaged in cutting the Erie canal,
near Rome, found several hundred live mollusks
forty-two feet deep in an alluvial deposit They
must have been there centuries, and probably
would have been alive to-day, but the working
men fried and ate them. The same t~enacity Of
life is shown under circumstances even more
abnormal. Max Muller relates that some snails
from which he had cut their heads lived more
than a year in that state without food. They
have been known to reproduce feet, eyes, and
even the whole head after amputation
EAE