230 SNAILS. 



approaching though we find that they must be endued 

 with some faculty capable of accomplishing the pur- 

 pose ; for no sooner does a plum, a fig, a nectarine, or 

 other fruit, begin to ripen on the wall, and long before 

 any sensible odor can be diffused from it, even before 

 an experienced eye can detect the approach to maturity, 

 than those creatures, the slug and the snail, will advance 

 from their asylums, though remotely situate, and pro- 

 ceed by very direct paths to the object. This cannot 

 probably be by the guidance of any known faculty. 

 Eyesight was once considered to be situate on the sum- 

 mit of their horns ; but this is now known to be erro- 

 neous, and we do not know that they have any vision. 

 The acoustic organ of worms and insects is unknown ; 

 arid it is not by any means ascertained that these crea- 

 tures ever hear.* If they possess the faculty of smell- 

 ing, in them it must be a very exquisite sense, beyond 

 any delicacy we can comprehend. Thus, excluding 

 human means of comprehension, which appear inade- 

 quate, we more reasonably conclude them to be endowed 

 with intelligences for effecting intentions, of which we 

 have no perception, and which we have no capacity for 

 defining. The contemplative man finds pleasure in 

 viewing the ways and artifices of creatures to accom- 

 plish a purpose, though he knows not the directing 

 means ; and it fortifies the convictions of the believer, 

 by giving him fresh evidences of the universal superin- 

 tendence of his Maker, that even the slug and the 

 snail, which are arranged so low in the scale of crea- 

 tion, are yet, equally with all, the object of his benevo- 

 lence and care. 



Connected with this subject of snails, a circumstance 

 that took place in this neighborhood is brought to my 

 remembrance, which discovered yet latent in a few of 

 us, notwithstanding our boasted enlightenment, some 

 leaven of the superstition of darker ages ; and that any 

 occurrence, not the event of every coming day, may be 

 made a subject of wonder by the ignorant, and a means 



* That bees are attracted by the hiving-pan is generally considered 

 as fallacious, and the practice useless. 



