MOLLUSCA—SNAIL. 761 
THE SNAIL. 

Tuts 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, hearty 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 cther 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 ean direct to different 
objects at pleasure, by a regular motion out of the body; and sometimes it 
ides 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 
to 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 
eggs, 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 
snell; they are also stuck to each other by an imperceptible slime, hke 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The same substance by which the shell is originally made, goes to the re- 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 globular, with the spire slightly 
elevated ; aperture entire, broader than long, very oblique, contiguous to the axis of the 
shell, Laving the margin disunited by the projection of the penult imate whorl. 
96 64* 
