MOLLUSCA— SNAIL. 76] 



THE SNAIL. 1 



This animal is furnished with the organs of life in a manner almost as 

 complete as the largest animal ; with a tongue, brain, salival ducts, glands, 

 nerves, stomach and intestines, liver, heart, and blood-vessels; besides 

 these, it has a purple bag that furnishes a red matter to different parts of the 

 body, together with strong muscles that hold it to the shell, and which are 

 hardened, like tendons, at their insertion. 



But these it possesses in common with other animals. We must now 

 see what it has peculiar to itself. The first striking peculiarity is, that the 

 animal has got its eyes on the points of its largest horns. When the snail 

 is in motion, four horns are distinctly seen ; but the two uppermost and 

 longest deserve peculiar consideration, both on account of the various mo- 

 tions with which they are endued, as well as their having their eyes fixed at 

 the extreme ends of them. The eyes the animal can direct to different 

 objects at pleasure, by a regular motion out of the body ; and sometimes it 

 hides them, by a very swift contraction into the belly. Under the small 

 norns is the animal's mouth; and though it may appear too soft a substance 

 /o be furnished with teeth, yet it has not less than eight of them, with which 

 it devours leaves, and other substances, seemingly harder than itself; and 

 with which it sometimes bites off pieces of its own shell. 



At the expiration of eighteen days after coupling, the snails produce their 

 e^gs, and hide them in the earth with the greatest solicitude and industry. 

 These eggs are in great numbers, round, white, and covered with a soft 

 shell; they are also stuck to each other by an imperceptible slime, like a 

 bunch of grapes, of about the size of a small pea. 



The snail is possessed not only of a power of retreating into its shell, but 

 of mending it when broken. Sometimes these animals are crushed seem- 

 ingly to pieces, and to all appearance utterly destroyed ; yet still they set 

 themselves to work, and, in a few days, mend all their numerous breaches. 

 The same substance by which the shell is originally made, goes to the re- 

 establishment of the ruined habitation. 



1 Helix. Shell orbicular, convex or covered, sometimes glohular, with the spire slightly 

 elevated ; aperture entire, broader than long, very oblique, contiguous to the axis of 'he 

 shell, having the margin disunited by the projection of the penult imate whorl. 



96 64* 



