Connected with this subject of snails, a circumstance that took place in this neighborhood is brought to my remembrance, which discovered yet latent in a few of us, notwithstanding our boasted enlightenment, some leaven of the superstition of darker ages; and that any occurrence, not the event of every coming day, may be made a subject of wonder by the ignorant, and a means for the artful to deceive the credulous. A little banded snail (helix virgata) is a very common species on most of our arid, maritime pastures, and the sheep-downs of many inland places. It happened, from some unknown cause, that those inhabiting a dry field in an adjoining parish were in one season, a few years ago, greatly increased, so as to become an object of notice to a few, then to more, till at length this accumulation was noised about as a supernatural event. The field was visited by hundreds daily from neighboring villages and distant towns. People who could not attend purchased the snails at a half-penny each; and there were persons who made five shillings a day by the sale of them. As this increase of the creature was not certainly to be accounted for, some had the impudence to assert that they had witnessed their fall from the clouds; and many declared their belief that some great public or private misfortune was indicated by it. The proprietor of the field being supposed not to maintain the same sentiments as the commonalty upon a political circumstance, which at that moment greatly agitated the country, it was considered as a manifestation of heavenly displeasure, precursive of malady, misfortune, death. However, autumn came, these snails retired to their holes in the banks, and the worthy man lived on,—and long may he live, esteemed and respected by all, unscathed by snails or misfortunes. Little obnoxious to injury as this garden snail appears to be, there is another creature, and that a very important one in the operations of nature, that is surrounded by dangers, harassed, pursued unceasingly, and becomes the prey of all: the common earth-worm (lumbricus terrestris). This animal, destined to be the natural manurer of the soil, and the ready indicator of an improved staple, consumes on the surface of the ground, where they soon would be injurious, the softer parts of decayed vegetable matters, and conveys into the soil the more woody fibres, where they moulder, and become reduced to a simple nutriment, fitting for living vegetation. The parts consumed by them are soon returned to the surface, whence, dissolved by frosts, and scattered by rains they circulate again in the plants of the soil, “Death still producing life.”