SNAIL FOLK 



the land, I sink beneath the surface. Gills mark 

 my rhythm of breath, limbs shrink to fins, and even 

 these vanish, while my backbone, last hold upon 

 the higher Hfe, dissolves to a notochord. At one end 

 of my evolution Roosevelt called me friend — mil- 

 lions of years earher any passing worm might have 

 hailed me as brother. 



My httle periwinkle has glided about unchanged 

 through all the ages — through the travails of 

 primitive apeman, the frightened, nocturnal scur- 

 ryings of tiny insect-eaters, the splashing of mud- 

 hopping amphibians, the swimming of swift-finned, 

 water creatures, and the wriggling of still more 

 lowly ancestors of the sea. When a nation shuts it- 

 self off from other nations behind physical barriers 

 or those of conceit, progress in the best sense ceases ; 

 when an individual miser or hermit or egoist lives 

 safe and selfishly, he becomes automatically static. 

 Finally when a race of creatures develops an ability 

 to clothe itself in impregnable marble palaces, im- 

 mune to a host of dangers which threaten less ar- 

 mored brethren, there is little need of their chang- 

 ing to meet new conditions. 



And so let us compare the past history of man 

 and his mammalian forebears who have fought the 

 fight naked, with the line of gentle, sheltered snails. 

 Ten thousand years have seen the development of 

 what we are pleased to call civilization ; ten million 

 years ago man began to be man rather than ape; 

 fifty millions of years saw the first mammals that 

 ever were. Five times this time, or two hundred and 



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