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 ; 
and 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. 
