The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-29
SNAIL RAISING FOR PROFIT.

Unique Occupation of a California Man Snail raising for profit is the unique occupation of a California man, and his snail ranch at Los Angeles is supposed to be the only place in the United States where snails are bred and raised as an article of food. This odd indus try is little more than a fad in this country, but in France the succulent | escargot is in high favor with the gour- met, eight hundred tons of them being consumed ast year in the city of Paris alone. A few years ago MT. A. V. Per not, of Los Angeles, a native of France, imported two dozen of the variety
 known as "escargot Bourgogne," and attempted to found a colony of the slimy and repulsve appearing crea- lures. He knew their food value, and he knew that "sirup d'escargots" Is es- teemed of benefit in the treatment of throat and lung affections. The varie- ty imported is carnivorous, and they
 lived but short time on the vegetable
 diet to which they were subjected
 Later MT. Pernot received a consign-
 ment of the variety "escargot Borde-
 laise" which is herbivorous, and the
 success of his experiment. has been
 phenomenal The colony has increased
 so rapidly that in the breeding season
 the services of one man are required
 constantly in the care of the thousands
 of snails that crowd the confines of
 their pens.
 Snail raising is beset with few diff culties. All that is needed is a small enclosure in a moist place, so protected
 that the crawling gasteropod cannot stray away with its shell-house on its back
 In the Los Angeles snaillery the pens are built under a large windmill tank where water is plentiful Several long boxes, two feet wide and one and one half feet in height, are arranged about an open space, and the tops are covered with wire netting fitted with hinges. Inside the boxes are numerous lengths of drain tile, in and upon which the snails cling in great numbers and in all stages of development.
 The eggs of the snail, tiny in size and whitish-gray in color, are laid in May or June when large numbers of the creatures gather in sunny places. When about to lay the snail burrows into the damp soil, sheltered from the sums rays, and deposits from thirty to fifty eggs that look like small pills. Three or four similar deposits are made and abandoned in season.
 Ordinarily the young snail gnaws it's way out of the shell, and to the sur face within twenty or thirty days, but instances have been noted of eggs that have been dried and kept for many years, and then returned to moist place. where they matched in the usual period.
 The snails are liveliest in the early morning. This is their feeding time, and they come out in myriads to receive shower bath from garden hose and to feast on the cabbage, lettuce and grape vine deaves that compose their diet They are voracious eaters, and when several thousand of them are eat ing the noise they make with their horny jaws and cartilaginous tongue is not unlike the champing of a horse on it's bit.
 In their native haunts the snails are great pests, resembling grasshoppers in their destructbilty, and instances are cited where entire gardens of cabbage and strawberries have been devasted in a night Chicago Tribune.