108 



CONCHOLOGY. 



which the animal's body, in the first instance, is 

 coated, or, as it were, merely glazed, till that sub- 

 stance becomes a consistent firm shell, finally fashioned 

 into a painted palace adapted to the form and use of 

 its inhabitant. It needs no logic to prove, that 

 wherever creatures are endowed with a long en- 

 durance of life and great reproductive powers, great 

 purposes are assigned to them. The contemned 

 snail does not, therefore, merit the ill treatment it 

 constantly experiences from man ; and if we for a 

 moment reflect upon its good services, and overlook 

 its bad ones, we are bound to confess the former 

 greatly outweigh the latter. It is viewed as a destruc- 

 tive marauder in our trim gardens ; but we forget 

 that we have invited its inroads by placing, within a 

 comparatively limited space, a choice selection of 

 dainty food even to the pampered appetite of man, 

 but altogether irresistible to a snail. In the open 

 fields, or the widely expanded forest, this little 

 creature performs useful purposes in conformity to 

 the ends of its creation ; one of the most important of 

 which is that of assisting in consuming the exuberant 

 productions of nature, which, without its operations, 

 would encumber the surface of the globe, check the 

 progress of future vegetation, and interrupt that 

 perpetual harmony of system, which has wisely 

 ordained that the extinction of life shall not be felt, 

 but its devastations become supplied by succeeding 

 generations, each of their kind, whether vegetable or 

 animal. In countries w,here vegetation is too luxu- 

 riant to be trained by art to the use of mankind, cover- 

 ing immense tracts of land with impenetrable gloom, 

 not only snails, but other species of terrestrial molluscs, 

 achatina, bulinas, &c., are found, some of a very 

 large size, proportioned to the magnitude of the 

 duties they have to perform, and in these situations 

 their voracity is said to be most extraordinary 

 stripping the loftiest trees of their verdure in an incre- 

 dibly short space of time. Shall we then grudge it a 

 slender portion of our superfluous luxury, without as- 

 certaining, by actual examination and rational reflec- 

 tion, that this little creature was not merely ordained 

 to devour our choicest fruit, but that it has also a duty 

 to perform by consuming, in a far greater proportion, 

 other things in the vegetable world that would, with- 

 out them, prevent the full completion of the very ob- 

 ject for which we ignorantly destroy a principal agent. 

 The well-established fact, that the eggs of these 

 animals have been absolutely baked, during six 

 months, under the scorching rays of a tropical sun, 

 without destroying the germ of life, proves, could no 

 other facts be adduced, that nature has vested in 

 these creatures certain important uses and powers 

 far beyond our short-sighted views ; and it must lead 

 a philosophical mind to conclude, that in this in- 

 stance, as well as in many others equally remarkable, 

 we stubbornly close our eyes to the good that is 

 forced upon us. We think we hear it said, that in 

 advocating the cause of snails, we have never had the 

 mortification of seeing our ripe and delicately-painted 

 peaches disfigured by their hungry propensities. Be 

 that as it may, we have also observed, that they, like 

 ourselves, when no such treat presented itself, were 

 content with humbler fare, and as industriously as 

 voraciously consumed other objects, to us useless, or 

 noxious as food, never deserting the purpose of their 

 existence, though that end is not yet fully revealed to 

 us. As an article of food, they are entitled to our con- 

 federation j for, though they form no part of our gastro- 



nomic delicacies, they nevertheless were considered 

 such by the Roman gourmand ; see AMPULLARIA; and 

 even down to the present day, snails form an important 

 article of nourishment and commerce in Germany, 

 France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the Levant. This 

 digression leads to a conclusion, constantly to be 

 drawn by every reflective mind, that from the colossus 

 of bivalves (the Tridacna gigantea) whose inhabitant 

 would satiate the " sharp-set appetites of an hundred 

 men," down to the shell less than a grain of sand, each 

 is endowed with similar mechanical powers and 

 bodily faculties, adapted to its sphere of action in the 

 place it is destined to occupy, the one and the other 

 playing an equally important part in this crumbling 

 theatre of mortality, and forming so many connecting 

 links of the chain that binds together the invisible 

 operations of nature under the directing wisdom of 

 Omnipotence. 



We hope to be able to point out many useful, as 

 well as pleasing results, derived from the study of 

 Conchology, and to give an interest to it beyond the 

 commonly-received opinion of it. In the first place, 

 it is inseparably connected with geology, or the 

 formation of the earth, and a study of the one must 

 necessarily contribute to a more perfect knowledge 

 of the other, since shells, from a period before time 

 was, have constituted so large a portion of the earth's 

 matter. In their fossil state they have been elo- 

 quently called by a late writer the only true medals 

 of creation now extant. He says, " by these medals 

 we are taught that innumerable beings have lived, of 

 which not one of the same kind does any longer 

 exist ; that immense beds, composed of the spoils of 

 these animals, extending for miles under ground, are 

 met with in many parts of the globe ; that enormous 

 chains of mountains, which seem to load the surface 

 of the earth, are as vast monuments, in which these 

 remains of former ages are entombed ; that though 

 lying thus crushed together in a rude and confused 

 mass, they are hourly suffering those changes by 

 which, after thousands of years, they become the 

 chief constituent parts of gems, the limestone which 

 forms the cottage of the lowly peasant, or the marble 

 which adorns the splendid palace of the prince." 

 To this may be added, that the local indications they 

 furnish enable us to ascertain, with a considerable 

 degree of precision, the indentity or the superposition 

 of the different strata of the earth's formation, to 

 distinguish between the various geological changes of 

 the antediluvian world, and to account philosophi- 

 cally for many of those natural phenomena which 

 the mutations of this planet have produced, changes 

 which, without some knowledge of conchology, must 

 have remained, if not altogether unaccounted for, at 

 least less easily understood. Indeed, it is to geolo- 

 gists that we are indebted, in a great measure, for 

 having rescued conchology from the obscurity into 

 which it had nearly fallen as a science. The ex- 

 tremely minute characters existing between fossil 

 shells, or between them and recent species, required 

 an extended knowledge of the subject, including the 

 structure of the animal, as well as its dwelling ; and 

 it consequently became necessary to establish some- 

 thing like well-grounded principles and given rules to 

 guide them in their delicate researches, or to assist in 

 resolving the extremely difficult problems they have 

 undertaken to explain. To the physiologist and 

 anatomist, a study of the animals, the architects as 

 well as inhabitants of these beautiful productions of 



