very small, is below. The
shell, when the animal is out of it, is semi-transparent, and the little
colomella, or pillar, can be indistinctly seen through."

There follows a detailed and loving description of the animal inhabiting
the shell, which I must reserve for a future edition. Of another species
of snail, Helix strigata, our learned author observes that "This shell
is, when dead, one of those which is found on the banks of the Tiber. It
is a strange circumstance that, although it is a land shell, it should
be found more on the banks of a river than anywhere else, and also only
on the banks of the Tiber, for it is not found on the banks of any other
river. Any one would think that dead shells were gifted with the power
of walking about, for certainly it is an inexplicable wonder how they
got there." Of Helix muralis we are informed that "The Romans eat these
snails, not the whole of them, but only their feet. In ancient times the
most wealthy people used to eat snails, and perhaps they ate the very
ones which the poorest people eat nowadays. It is most probable, for
there are a great many different kinds of snails round Rome, and the
Romans would probably select the best." I may perhaps be permitted
to remark that the correct orthography of this writer fills me with
astonishment, inasmuch as in later life I have reason to know that
he often went astray in this respect. Of the uniform maturity of the
literary style, I have no need to speak.

Eddy's father was in the habit of giving him an income of two or three
pauls a week, dependent on his good behavior and punctual preparation of
his lessons; and since Eddy was always well behaved and faithful in his
studies, the income came in pretty regularly. Eddy saved up this revenue
with a view to buying himself a microscope, for the better prosecution
of his zoological labors; being, also, stimulated thereto by the fact
that I already possessed one of these instruments, given me by my father
a year or two before. Mine cost ten shillings, but Eddy meant to get one
even more expensive. I had, too, a large volume of six hundred pages on
The Microscope, Its History, Construction, and Uses, by Jabez Hogg, the
contents of which I had long since learned by heart, and which I gladly
communicated to my friend. At length Eddy's economies had proceeded so
far that he was able to calculate that on his twelfth birthday he would
possess a fortune of five scudi, and he decided that he wo