Snail

“ Their vast and far-reaching tails lost their length, and their bones spread out laterally into flexible fans of toughest gristle, with which they could propel themselves through the waves at speeds to which their swiftest progress upon land had been but a snail’s crawl. ”

“ What majesty is in a creeping snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself. ”

“ In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them. ”

“ A few disordered movements betray a brief excitement on the part of the Snail, and then everything ceases: the foot no longer crawls, the front-part loses its graceful curve, the tentacles become limp and give way under their own weight, dangling feebly like a broken stick. ”

“ Your snail will creep to any sentiment you choose as you direct it. Hers is left free in its movements, but it will follow the same course that its mate has chosen. Thus the sweetest messages can be sent across the ocean. The last word of the snail in America, 'All's well,' or 'Non ti scordar di me,' can be made to echo sweetly on a far-off shore. ”

“ When our subject finds a living water snail it enters its breathing organs, becomes affixed to their walls and loses its covering of little whips. It becomes transformed into a shapeless mass which later develops into an elongated structure, quite unlike the free swimming creature which took shelter within the snail. Next, a migration is made to the liver of the snail where birth is given to, from fifteen to twenty, curious little heart-shaped organisms each with a tail about twice as long as its body. ”

“ In summer, when walking out in country places, we often find pretty little snail-shells. Some of these are empty, and some have a live snail within.
2. The shell is the snail's house. It is a queer house, as it grows on him, as hair grows on a cat; and he carries it about on his back when he walks.
3. The snail lives upon plants. In the day he finds some safe place under a stone, or in a hole, draws himself into his house, and goes to sleep. In the night he comes out and feeds. ”

“ After what seemed like a long walk, he sighted his third snail and turned left. For a moment he considered speaking to the snail, remembering that in all the stories he'd heard speech was standard equipment for all forms of life in fairyland, but he refrained because of the petulant look on the snail's face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The truest and most snail-like snails are found in greatest abundance upon high chalk-downs, heathy limestone hills, and other comparatively dry places; while the truest and most slug-like slugs are found in greatest abundance among low water-logged meadows, or under the damp fallen leaves of moist copses. The intermediate kinds inhabit the intermediate places. Yet to the last even the most thorough-going snails retain a final trace of their original water-haunting life, in their universal habit of seeking out the coolest and moistest spots of their respective habitats. ”

“ The materials are obtained by the snail through its food. The deposits of it—made as the snail’s nature, certainly not the snail’s reason—dictates, grow into a sheltering framework for its protection. ”

“ Snails, too, play a very important part in our ordinary daily food, although the snail-hater would scoff at the idea. But it is even so. What think you imparts to South Down and Dartmoor mutton its fine flavour and highly nutritive properties? Snails! The grass upon which they feed teems with small snails of the Helix caperata species, and these, with or without the will of the sheep, form part of the diet of the latter, taken with the grass. ”

“ Why has the snail four tentacula attached to its head?
Because the insect, having no other limbs, is provided with those projecting members, the lower two serving as feelers and the upper two also as feelers and eyes. These, projecting in the front of the animal, impart to it a consciousness of surrounding objects, and especially of those which lie in its path.
1310. Why is the snail able to move, without feet? ”

“ DII.
[The snail scoops out hollows, little rotund chambers, in limestone, for its residence. This habit of the animal is so important in its effects, as to have attracted the attention of geologists, and Dr. Buckland alluded to it at the meeting of the British Association in 1841. See Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes,' p. 43. The following rhyme is a boy's invocation to the snail to come out of such holes.]
Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I will beat you as black as a coal.
DIII.
Sneel, snaul,
Robbers are coming to pull down your wall ”

“ Indeed up to the present day in many of our provincial dialects slugs and snails are invariably both included under the latter name; the snail proper being sometimes distinguished from the other as the ‘shell-snail’ (see Holland’s Plutarch, p. 212) . See an interesting discussion in the Philological Society’s Transactions, 1860-1, pp. 102-106.
There is much variety even in creatures of the same kind. See these two snails. One hath a house, the other wants it ”

“ Where the ground is made of chalk or limestone, they will be found most abundant; for as the snail's shell is composed of layers of animal tissue, strengthened by depositions of calcareous earthy-matter which the creature gets from the plants on which it feeds, and these in their turn obtain from the soil—it naturally follows that the snail prefers to dwell where that article is most abundant, as an hour's hunt on any chalk-down will soon show. ”

“ Drawings to show the pond snail in various positions in the aquarium. A drawing of the slug. At least three different types of snail shell. Summary. In what respects does a snail show resemblance to a clam? What are the chief points of difference? What reasons can you suggest for the better development of the sense organs? What advantage has a snail over a clam in the matter of getting food? How does the shell of the snail compare with that of the clam as an organ for protection? ”

“ Two species of shelled snail take harbour in the wall—one of them the beautiful Helix nemoralis. There are insects innumerable, bronze and gilded flies, and spiders that hang out their golden webs to the dews of morning. These are festooned from stone to stone, and are productions of the night. Weasels love the old wall, mice hide beneath it, and from it in spring the hedgehog rolls, its spines covered with dead oak leaves. ”

“ The snail must be rapidly digested in the stomachs of birds generally, as in some hundred cases that have come under my examination the internal shell alone has borne witness to its having ever been there. ”

“ If they happened to come across a snail, they pounced on it and crushed it, making grimaces with the corners of their mouths, as if they were cracking nuts. They never went out without their grafting implements, and they used to cut the worms in two with such force that the iron of the implement would sink three inches deep. ”

“ Bivalves generally at the bottom, among stones, or buried in the sand, or among the roots of aquatic plants.
3. Land Shells.—These resemble, more or less, in their habits the garden snail, though varying greatly in character, size, and colour. They mostly abound in a chalk or limestone district, and in moist and wooded situations. Some species inhabit low and damp spots, roots of trees, hollows and crevices of rocks and walls; [Pg 67] some lie under stones or pieces of wood, or in the earth; others climb shrubs, and in tropical climates even lofty trees. ”

“ Without possessing a high order of intelligence, the snail is by no means imbecile; it knows very well how to choose a tree the fruit of which is agreeable to it. A fine cluster of grapes, a succulent pear, which the horticulturist devours with his looks, and hopes to devour otherwise, is sure to be the identical fruit which will be chosen by our enlightened depredator, the snail. ”

“ A simple version of the puzzle of the climbing snail is familiar to everybody. We were all taught it in the nursery, and it was apparently intended to inculcate the simple moral that we should never slip if we can help it. This is the popular story. A snail crawls up a pole 12 feet high, ascending 3 feet every day and slipping back 2 feet every night. ”

“ B is the body, soft and with a surface generally wrinkled or covered with small tubercles. F is the foot or muscular pad which forms the foot by the wavelike contractions of which it moves. H is the head, bearing the tentacles T1 and T2, of which the upper pair have the eyes, E. The mantle, M, makes the shell by secreting lime, etc. In it is the breathing orifice, BO, obvious in the slug, but in the snail nearly hidden by the shell. L in the snail is the spiral part, the liver, and it occupies a large part of the shell. ”

“ Yet even then he carried a house on his back, a tiny, perfect shell, into which he could creep when danger threatened.
“Some people say I am very slow,” said the snail, “but they forget I have only one foot and carry my house on my back. Yet I am not complaining, for I have a head in which [268] are my eyes, mouth, feelers, and organs of smell, while my relative, the oyster, having no head, has to wear his eyes, ears, and feelers on his mantle and his mouth near his hinge, poor fellow! Even my own cousin, the land-snail, has her eyes on long feelers, and has to draw them in if danger is near. ”

“ In the woods you see yellow ones with several black bands wound round them in regular order.”
“The creature we call the spiral snail—isn’t it a slug that finds an empty shell and lives in it?” asked Emile.
“No, my friend; a slug remains always a slug without becoming a snail; that is to say, it never has a shell. The snail, on the contrary, is born with a tiny shell that grows little by little as the snail grows. The empty shells you find in the country have had their inhabitants, which are now dead and turned to dust, only their houses remaining.” ”

“ SNAIL. The common garden Snail, so destructive to our vegetables, belongs to the genus Helix. The water snail, found in ponds, is Planorbis.
SOL. Humph. A genus consisting of several species of the genus Trochus, and corresponding with the sub-genus Tubicanthus, Sw. Malac. Fig. 349.
SOLARIUM. Auct. (A terrace, or gallery.) Fam. Turbinacea, Lam. Goniostomata, Bl.—Descr. Discoidal beneath, conical above, with a wide umbilicus, the spiral margin of which is angulated and crenulated; aperture trapezoidal; peritreme thin, sharp; columella straight; operculum horny, subspiral.—Obs. ”

“ Although the Mollusca include but one terrestrial group, the Snails, they, too, have played an appreciable part in modifying plant life. If we owe our flowers to the insects, we have probably to thank the snail for our medicines. For the snail dislikes bitter-tasting leaves, and lets them alone, thus exercising an artificial selection in favour of the survival of medicinal plants. In the same way the snail has favoured the survival of hairy and thorny plants, upon which it cannot easily crawl. ”

“ When the snail encounters an obstacle in its path, it lays its eggs, sensible beast. Ten thousand snails can be raised on a plot of land one hundred by two hundred feet. The ground is plowed deeply in the spring, the snails are placed on it and covered with from two to four inches of moss or straw which is kept damp. They must be fed daily with lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or grass; as they eat at night, they are fed shortly before sunset. Aromatic herbs, like mint, parsley, etc., are planted in the inclosure to improve the flavor of the snails. ”

“ She rubs a snail on the warts, and then places the snail on one of the points of a blackthorn, and, in fact, leaves the snail to die, transfixed by the thorn; and as the snail dies the warts disappear. ”

“ No more interesting object can be placed in a library or study than a snailery with several species of snails. They are far superior in interest to goldfish or canaries.
The most interesting snails are by no means the largest. Frequently the small snail shells with their animals have habits or shell structures of absorbing interest. ”

“ If the pupil has any of these operculated snails alive, he will observe that they do not come to the surface to breathe air. Instead of a lung, they have a cavity containing an organ, or part, called the gill, by means of which the snail is capable of getting from the water what the air-breathing snail gets from the air, namely, oxygen. It will be seen that the head of the snail is shaped differently in the snails having an operculum, the mouth being at the end of a sort of proboscis or rostrum. ”

“ The slow-moving snail, who climbs up by day one seventh of a foot and slides back by night one ninth of a foot, is seen here with his head just emerging from the fifty-foot well and looking remarkably active after a climb of 1,575 days. ”

“ The senses of touch and smell are far more active than that of sight. A bean-pod enclosed in a narrow glass case and placed before a hungry snail was not noticed, but when taken out of the case and placed 8 cm. behind the snail, the latter at once turned towards it to devour it.
Some interesting experiments were conducted by the same author with the view of ascertaining whether snails avoid or court the light. ”