Compleat Conchophilist

"The slug to the snail," says Peter J. Henniker Heaton with the finality of a man disposing of an issue once & for all, "is as the vagabond to the ratepayer."

Mr. Heaton, retired civil servant and amateur conchophilist, is the founder of the British Snail-Watching Society. Last week he, and the 70 members of his organization, celebrated their first anniversary by an all-night watch of snails (they roam chiefly at night) on the darkened byways of suburban London. . Like Henry V at Agincourt, the watchers could cry: "We few, we happy few"-for not only is conchophily a rare passion, but membership in the British Snail-Watching Society is rigorously limited to those devotees who take snails with high seriousness. "Lying in the grass, just watching, is not sufficient," says Heaton. The complete conchophilist must know snails in their nocturnal ramblings--as they scale the Himalayas of a graveled garden walk, patiently penetrate the jungles of a zinnia border, or chew the bloom off prize winning Gloire de Dijon roses.

Snailman Heaton fairly glows when he describes how snails have met problems that bedevil many Britons: "The snail may be slow, but it's efficient. It disposes of housing troubles by carrying its house on its back. It lays its own roads by glandular secretion. Above all, being an hermaphrodite, any snail can mate with any other.* Focusing your attention on a snail . . . is a soothing occupation--especially these days."

London's News Chronicle also celebrated the Snail Watchers' anniversary--with a cartoon showing three human heads pondering the imperceptible progress of a snail. But none of them resembled Peter J. Henniker Heaton. One was unmistakably Molotov, one Byrnes, the other Bevin. The snail was labeled: Peace-

*One species of snail, the Paludestrina jenkinsi, produces young parthenogenetically, without ever going near another snail.

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