Laidlay, having placed a number in a drawer for this
very purpose, found them alive after _five years'_ torpidity, although
in the warm climate of Calcutta. The pretty snails called _cyclostomas_,
which have a lid to their shells, are well known to survive
imprisonments of many months; but in the ordinary open-mouthed
land-snails such cases are even more remarkable. Several of the enormous
tropical snails often used to decorate cottage mantelpieces, brought by
Lieutenant Greaves from Valparaiso, revived after being packed, some for
thirteen, others for twenty months. In 1849, Mr. Pickering received
from Mr. Wollaston a basketful of Madeira snails (of twenty or thirty
different kinds), three-fourths of which proved to be alive, after
several months' confinement, including a sea voyage. Mr. Wollaston has
himself recorded the fact that specimens of two Madeira snails survived
a fast and imprisonment in pill-boxes of two years and a half duration,
and that large numbers of a small species, brought to England at the
same time, were _all_ living after being inclosed in a dry bag for a
year and a half.'
Whether the snails themselves liked their long deprivation of food and
moisture we are not informed; their personal tastes and inclinations
were very little consulted in the matter; but as they and their
ancestors for many generations must have been accustomed to similar long
fasts during tropical droughts, in all likelihood they did not much mind
it.
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