b a a a a a a 9 a ee ees 
Our Interesting Friend the Snail 
REV. FREDERICK R. WEBBER 
Chicago Aquarium Society 
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Every observer of nature has at some 
time or other waded into pond or stream 
and captured a supply of snails. At the 
time he may not have been vitally inter- 
ested in them. But then the day came 
when said observer's home was filled 
with aquaria. There were aquaria in 
every window, aquaria on the library 
table, aquaria in the kitchen, fish in the 
dishpan and fish in the laundry tubs. At 
this stage in his career, the fish fan has 
paused during his expedition for fleas 
and corethra larve, to gather a few snails 
and experiment with them in his tanks. 
He has found some of them to be just as 
good as a 15-cent department-store snail, 
while others from his catch have worked 
with the proverbial perseverence worthy 
of a better cause, eating his imported 
plants. At about this stage in the game 
the aquarium fiend has dug up his old 
school zoology in order to read up on the 
snail family. 
The old text probably revealed the 
astonishing fact that his snails, like an- 
cient Gaul and modern gall, are divided 
into three parts, the right-handed Lym- 
naea, the left-handed Physa, and the flat 
Planorbis, which was alleged to be nei- 
their right nor left, but coiled like a 
watch spring. 
It is true that, like the long-suffering 
monkey wrench, snails may be either 
right-handed or left-handed. This may 
be observed by comparing the shell, 
point downward, with a common wood- 
screw, which is right-handed at present 
writing. But not all Lymnaea are left- 
handed, although the majority of left- 
handed Lymnaea, like children with the 
Little Eva disposition, are found only 
among the departed. Several species of 
these have been imported from Hawaii, 
and have even been reported to have 
been found in America. We have also 
heard of right-handed Physa. And if 
one examine Planorbis closely, he will 
discover that, although 
flat and wound 
Ampullaria gigas 
like a watch spring, yet his aperture, or 
opening at the large end of the shell, in- 
clines to the one side. Therefore even 
the infallible school zoology textbook is 
at times slightly fallible. 
Roughly speaking, we may recognize 
Lymneeids by the elongated shell, pointed 
spire, usually with sharp tip, the ovate 
aperture, which sometimes is long and 
narrow, and the usual absence of the 
operculum, or trap-door, covering the 
open end of the shell. They come in 
assorted sizes. We have the small Galba 
dali, which is less than three-sixteenths 
of an inch in length, to the Lymnaea 
stagnalis, which is two and three-eighths 
inches long. 
A glance at Figure 7 (page 106) will 
