74: ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY. 



savants and philosophers have taught us of late years in respect 

 to natural history, it is that the're is, so to speak, nothing 

 " common or unclean " in Nature's works ; and that, if we only 

 use our eyes to see it, we may often find more of interest and 

 beauty in the little and unheeded objects at our feet, than in 

 those that men have gone to the ends of the earth to obtain. 

 Who ever dreamed what a world of wonders there is in the 

 strip of shore laid bare by every ebb of the tide, till Johnston, 

 and Forbes, and Gosse pointed it out to us ? And, to go a little 

 further back, could anybody ever have imagined that the insect 

 tribes would furnish the material for such a treasure-house of 

 pleasure and of profit as that dear old " Introduction to Ento- 

 mology " by Kirby and Spence ? And so it is all through the 

 animal series ; in the most familiar and insignificant members . of 

 it there is still much to surprise and gratify to wonder at and 

 admire. 



But, not to deal too much in these generalities, let us return 

 to our subject, and affirm, that the Snails, much despised, he- 

 kicked, and be-crushed as they have been and are, do really 

 deserve more considerate treatment, to be got rid of undoubt- 

 edly, if their rations are of consequence, but still to be looked at 

 and understood. Our partiality for the race has led us to study 

 their history, their curious structure, their habits, and general 

 economy ; and not satisfied with the British representatives of 

 the family, we have tried to pick up some information with 

 respect to the Snails of other lands, and especially those of the 

 " glorious tropics," where the family has its head-quarters, and 

 puts on a very imposing appearance. The reader will bear with 

 us, perhaps, for a brief space, while we discourse to him on these 

 matters in no very serious vein, of course ; but still so as to 

 make good our position, that your little, despised Mollusc is 

 worthy of attentive consideration. 



We will open the case by claiming for the Snails the respect 

 that is always accorded to old and long-established families. 

 There were Snails before the Flood before Adam even in those 

 far-remote eras of the past, when the lower orders of the animal 

 creation had the world all to themselves. The family seems to 

 have " come in " somewhere about the time when the huge 

 Dinotherium wallowed in the rivers of central Europe ; and it is 

 not at all improbable that some of the earliest members of it 



