J. W. Horsley

“ Six years later the shore-castles of Dover, Richborough, and Lympne succumbed. Then, in A.D. 447, another 22 tribe, the Saxons, came for a share in the goodly spoil, overran Anderida, the fortress of the great forest, and “slew all that were herein, nor was there afterwards one Briton left,” at any rate, in Kent. This Saxon, or strictly speaking, Jutish, invasion has given us most of our blood, and the greater part of our tongue, our territorial divisions, most names of places, and those of the days of the week. ”

“ When a language is not pure, but the result of the intermingling and interaction of several tongues as distinct as Celtic, Saxon and Norman; and when, by the wear and tear of daily use through centuries, place-names have altered in detail of spelling and pronunciation; and when for a long time spelling and reading were arts known but to a small minority of 58 the population, it is plainly inevitable that the original form and real meaning of a place-name should often be difficult to trace. ”

“ Using the precious gift of observation, we have found our shells; at home we exercise the other gifts of comparison and order, in the preparation and arrangement of our collection. A dash of quite boiling water kills instantaneously any molluscs whose shells we want to preserve, and then the body is extracted after the fashion observed with regard to winkles at tea. Be careful to get out all the body of the animal, and [Pg 20] then it is well to wash out any slime or particles by directing a fine but strong jet of cold water into the shell. ”

“ There are two Anglo-Saxon words which have to be distinguished—Beorh, like the German Berg, meaning a hill; and Buruh or Byrig, which comes later into the suffix Bury, which again later comes to be used for a division of 69 Hundred or simply for a town. In the south of England we have most of the distinctively Saxon or Jutish Bury, while in the north we have the Anglian and Norse forms of Burgh, Brough, Borough, more common. And one must add, as a variant of the same word, Barrow, which in modern use we confine to a tumulus for the sepulture of a great warrior or leader. ”

“ One thing that strikes one at once is the proof any list of Kentish villages gives of the forestal character of Kent. As one of my aims is to save trouble on the part of some future writer who shall produce the long overdue History of Kentish Place-Names, I will here transcribe all which indicate a woodland origin. ”

“ I differ from the Gasteropoda (whether they be terrestrial or aquatic) in that I and my near relations are exclusively aquatic and of a sedentary life, which makes the protection of two encompassing shells necessary. These shells are secreted by my mantle lobes, and are united by a ligament which tends to make the valves ‘gape’ for water and food and by two contracting muscles which close them in danger. I have a degenerate brain and no eyes. My mouth has neither jaw nor teeth, but possesses nervous lips covered with cilia, the vibration of which carries food-laden water to my mouth. ”

“ Nemoralis is fond of sand-hills by the coast, but is chiefly a hedge-snail, and the edges of main roads are preferred because of the greater variety of food, because the traffic scares away their bird enemies, and because the dust gives them abundance of already prepared material for their shells. When, however, the collector comes to a wayside cottage where fowls are kept he need not waste his time in looking for snails in the neighbouring hedge. The more the chicken industry extends and the more the Bird Protection Acts operates, the worse it is for collectors of snails. ”

“ The British and Saxon camps were no doubt numerous when we consider the centuries of marauders and invaders which kept our earliest forefathers in a constant fear. They were usually round or oblong, whereas the fewer and later camps or forts of the Romans were rectangular. Surrounded by a deep ditch, the earth of which was thrown up to make a wall, into them in troublous times were collected families and flocks, so that the transition of meaning from the Byrig or fort to the Borough or town was easy. ”

“ Get into the way of carrying a note-book with you to record not only what shells, or varieties of a species, are found in any particular spot, but also anything you observe as to the habits or peculiarities of the objects of your search. ”

“ There are not so many as one would expect considering the importance and power and the possessions of the Church in Kent. Taking some as they occur to me, there are All Hallows, in Sheppey, so named from the dedication of its church to All Saints’. The Latin Sanctus and the Teutonic Helige are the same in meaning. So we have, too, in Lower Halstow the Saxon helige stow—the holy place. In a list of Jack Cade’s Kentish followers, in 1450, the parish of Omi Scor is mentioned, which puzzled me for a moment until I saw it was a contraction for Omnium Sanctorum, All Saints’. ”

“ A snail may possess over twenty thousand tiny flinty teeth set on a ribbon so as to make a mowing-machine for the vegetable matter on which it feeds. With its aid also you might study the life-history of a mollusc from the egg onwards, and be able to determine by minute anatomical points whether two molluscs were of the same species or not—a matter in which the shape or appearance of the shell is not always a safe guide. ”

“ Herein, our real home or cradle, dwelt three tribes of the Low German stock, Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, and as to Kent it was the Jutes from Jutland who, under Hengist and Horsa, in A.D. 449, landed at Ebbsfleet in Thanet, as did others in the Isle of Wight, the Islands in both cases forming a great naval and military station, from which the hinterlands of Kent and Hants could be overrun. The later, and larger, seizures of the Saxons were all the southern counties, Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex, while the sphere of the Angles spread upwards from what we still call East Anglia. ”

“ H. itala, virgata, etc., are fond of a newspaper for food rather than for shelter.
During the hibernating season, which extends from November to April, we turn rather to ditches than to hedges, and, armed with a perforated scoop at the end of a long stick, we dredge among the water-weeds, or sift, like gold-washers, the sand or mud in ditches, ponds, and backwaters [Pg 19] of rivers. Here we are introduced to the great bivalve family which is unknown on land, and our trophies range from the freshwater mussels, as large as our hand, to others hardly larger than a pin’s head. ”

“ The Islands of Kent.
Most islands are attached portions of the nearest mainland, severed in prehistoric times by subsidence of the intervening soil and the action of strong currents. Thus even England is a portion of the Continent, as its fauna and flora proclaim, while Ireland was severed earlier still. Thus also the Isle of Wight is Hampshire. So our Kentish islands, now only two and neither now to be effectually circumnavigated, are practically absorbed in the mainland. “Sheppey, Thanet—what else?” most would say. ”

“ The body of this species is cobalt blue, the apex of the shell is flat, its colour opaque, and the last whorl more expanded than in others. All belong to the sub-genus Polita, and have polished or glossy shells. All love shade and moisture, and should be sought under stones or wood or in moss. They only come out by day when it is wet, a habit they may have acquired from their being a favourite food of birds, 416 having been found in the crop of one nestling Stockdove; while various flies are very destructive to them. This species prefers animal food, and is more gregarious than others. ”

“ Tenterden is named, says an old Kentish writer, as “some vulgar fancies conjecture, from the tenderness of its soil”; Feversham, says another old Kentish writer, Phillipott, useful as an historian, useless to etymologists, “is an unhealthy town, and carries the tokens of it in its name.” Id. est., the home of fevers! Harbledown, says Black, is so-called “in allusion to its grassy downs and hills,” as if grassiness were not a characteristic of any and every down and hill in Kent. ”

“ A heart of two chambers, veins, arteries, and blood our snail possesses, and, like man, the old snail has a slower pulse than the young one, and in both exercise increases the pulse rate and also warmth. Breathing is accomplished by a single chamber or air-cell, but also through the skin. As in the case of plants, some kinds are male and female separately, and as some have both powers and products in the same plant, so also is it with mollusca. H. aspersa and most Gasteropoda are of the latter kind. ”

“ So we have our Chelsfield, Oakfield, Ifield, Broomfield, Whitfield, Swingfield, Fairfield, Hothfield, Stalisfield, Clexfield, Longfield, Fieldgreen, and Netherfield, in the more forestal part of Kent, while in the list of parishes in the Rochester diocese, where marsh and down prevailed, I find only one parish—Matfield—which suggests old felling of trees. Sometimes, however, there would be attractive glades or leys on the outskirts of the forest, already pastured or cultivated to a certain extent. ”

“ Thus the slug Limax gets its name from limus, “mud”; but a scientist, who ought to have known [Pg 12] better, when wanting a name for another kind of slug, transposed the initial letters and made Milax! Vitrina is a sensible and descriptive name, the Latin for glassy, given to a shell like thin glass; but the Greek Arion recalls either a certain musician or a certain swift steed, neither of whom naturally suggests a slug. ”

“ It will be found that spelling was often so vague that even a lawyer in writing an old record or will may spell a name differently in the same document, and in most cases in mediæval times the sound of the word ruled its spelling. ”

“ Thrushes and mice are its great enemies, the former smashing it on some stone which may be found surrounded by the broken shells. The “mouth” or peristome is normally black, the shell larger and stouter than hortensis, in which the mouth is white. When a white-mouthed nemoralis or dark-mouthed hortensis (both rare) is found, the shape of the internal flinty dart at once distinguishes them. In some places both live together: in most one is found and not the other. ”

“ But always in an enquiring mind there was the insistent WHY? which is a characteristic and a glory of man as a reasoning animal, and hence often a meaning was given to a word that is simply a sort of pun, an endeavour to explain a word by what it looks like in current speech or dialect when there was not the knowledge of earlier times and older tongues which elevates mere guessing into the science of etymology. ”

“ A spiral shell of 4-1/2 whorls, suture very deep. Mouth circular (whence its name) and provided with a thick shelly operculum which closes the orifice when the animal retires by means of an elastic ligament. This and the next species are our only land shells provided with an operculum, and this shows their derivation from the marine Gasteropoda (e.g. whelk and winkle) . Perhaps all shells were originally marine, but some became first amphibious and then terrestrial. It is quite unlike any other of our land shells.
Acicula lineata is a very small shell, the size of the Pupæ ”