CHAPTER IV. AN APOLOGY FOR SNAILS. "An inadvertent step may crush the snail It will be better, perhaps, to begin by frankly confessing that we have ourselves a great partiality for Snails. We admire them, make pets of them, and feel rather pleased than otherwise; therefore, when they make themselves at home in our little back garden, which is very neat and pretty, the neighbours say, notwithstanding. The admission we have made will be a very damaging one, no doubt, in the estimation of all grave, sober-minded people; and we are not sure that it is altogether politic to be so forward with the avowal. But as it is, we openly acknowledge the predilection. Nay, more than that, we are prepared to defend it; and make bold to assert that there is not one person in a hundred—always excepting, of course, market-gardeners and amateur floricultural monomaniacs—who, if he (or she) were better acquainted with the Snail fraternity, would not regard them with something more of kindly tolerant feeling, even if they did not go the length that we do, of positively admiring them. The truth is, we have been so led away by prejudice and foolish antipathy against the little familiar things that are constantly before our eyes in fields, and gardens, and hedgerows, that we assume, as a matter of course, there can be nothing worth knowing about them; and if they at all incommode us, or do the slightest harm to our possessions, they are straightway doomed to a pitiless extermination. But surely it is high time that we began to understand these matters a little better. If there be one thing more than another that the researches of our 74 ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY. savants and philosophers have taught us of late years in respect to natural history, it is that there is, so to speak, nothing common or unclean" in Nature's works; and that, if we only use our eyes to see it, we may often find more of interest and beauty in the little and unheeded objects at our feet, than in those that men have gone to the ends of the earth to obtain. Who ever dreamed what a world of wonders there is in the strip of shore laid bare by every ebb of the tide, till Johnston, and Forbes, and Gosse pointed it out to us? And, to go a little further back, could anybody ever have imagined that the insect tribes would furnish the material for such a treasure-house of pleasure and of profit as that dear old "Introduction to Entomology" by Kirby and Spence? And so it is all through the animal series; in the most familiar and insignificant members of it there is still much to surprise and gratify-to wonder at and admire. But, not to deal too much in these generalities, let us return to our subject, and affirm, that the Snails, much despised, bekicked, and be-crushed as they have been and are, do really deserve more considerate treatment,-to be got rid of undoubtedly, if their rations are of consequence, but still to be looked at and understood. Our partiality for the race has led us to study their history, their curious structure, their habits, and general economy; and not satisfied with the British representatives of the family, we have tried to pick up some information with respect to the Snails of other lands, and especially those of the "glorious tropics," where the family has its head-quarters, and puts on a very imposing appearance. The reader will bear with us, perhaps, for a brief space, while we discourse to him on these matters—in no very serious vein, of course; but still so as to make good our position, that your little, despised Mollusc is worthy of attentive consideration. We will open the case by claiming for the Snails the respect that is always accorded to old and long-established families. There were Snails before the Flood-before Adam even-in those far-remote eras of the past, when the lower orders of the animal creation had the world all to themselves. The family seems to have "come in" somewhere about the time when the huge Dinotherium wallowed in the rivers of central Europe; and it is not at all improbable that some of the earliest members of it THE GARDEN SNAIL. 75 may have banqueted on the self-same herbage which sustained the enormous bulk of that unwieldy monster. Later down, in the classic days of Greece and Rome, the Snails were not only known, but held in great repute, and regularly had the honour of appearing at the tables of wealthy epicures, fresh from contact with a silver gridiron. It was in those days, indeed, that the tribe derived the family name by which it has ever since been known-Helix, a spiral, being the name that was given to the dainty morsel; while the same term, metamorphosed into Helicidae, now stands, all the world over where the science of Zoology obtains, as the distinctive appellation of the wide-spread family. All that by the way, however: what we want to impress upon our readers is, that if there be any honour attached to long descent and distinguished connections, then that honour can fairly be claimed by the Snail family. It may be as well, too, to observe at once, that though the representatives of the family which make themselves at home in our fields and hedges have nothing particularly attractive in their appearance, that is not by any means the case with those branches of the family that reside abroad. In " foreign parts" there are Snails to be found as far exceeding our own in delicacy and beauty of colouring as there are birds and insects that excel in brilliancy the winged tribes of our woods and fields. But these gaily-coloured individuals belong, of course, to the rich pastures and the sunny skies of tropic regions; and we do not mean to call in their aid just yet, in order to make good our position as to the claims of the family. Let us come back, therefore, to the little fellow with the dusky spotted shell that crawls across our garden-path, and to his somewhat prettier companions of the hedgerow. We will introduce them in due form-Helix aspersa, the Garden Snail; Helix nemoralis, the yellow or banded Snail of the wayside banks and hedges. And now observe that they make their way in the world by means of an expanded disc or foot, which, as it is in close contact with the ventral region of the body, has procured for the tribe a place amongst the great class of Gastropods, or belly-footed Molluscs. The foot itself is a very curious organ, and consists of a nearly uniform mass of muscular fibres, interwoven much in the same way as those of the human tongue. The regular gliding motion with which the common Snails crawl along, is due to a pair of 76 DELICATE REVELATIONS. muscles extending along the centre of the foot; but in some of the species the surface of the foot is divided by a longitudinal line along the centre, the muscles on the two sides of which act in rotation, and so cause the animals to progress in a perpetual zigzag. The glistening slimy tracks which they leave behind -"the silver-slimy trails," as poor Clare calls them—are produced by a discharge of mucus, designed to protect their tender bodies, and smooth the asperities of their way. It must be a very comfortable thing for the Snails to be able to carpet their path in this easy off-hand manner, and we confess we like to see the silvery line on posts and palings or gravelly walks; but when, as happens sometimes, the little fellows pay us a visit, in our parlour, where the place is carpeted beforehand, they might be considerate enough to wipe their feet before coming in. We must not omit to mention in this part of our discourse, the pretty conceit that obtains in some parts of the country as to the power of the Snail to reveal to tender-hearted maidens the names of their destined sweethearts. May-day morning is the auspicious occasion on which the disclosure can alone be made, and never do the entire Snail family meet with so much consideration as on that happy day. The poct Gray alludes to the subject in his lines beginning "Last May-day fair I search'd to find a snail, ana Croker, in his work on "Irish Fairy Legends,” informs us that in Ireland it is the common practice of boys and girls on May-day, to place the little soothsayer on a piece of slate lightly sprinkled with flour or fine dust, and to cover it over with a large leaf, when it never fails to describe by its mazy wanderings the initial of the much-desired name. A good deal of discussion has taken place amongst naturalists, as to whether Snails have any eyes or not. The popular notion, of course, is that the little knobs at the extremity of their long feelers or horns are eyes; and though several writers have questioned or boldly denied the truth of this opinion, it seems to be now pretty generally conceded, that the little club-shaped projections are true visual organs. Swammerdam, indeed, long ago demonstrated the matter to his own satisfaction, and pointed out the five distinct parts of which the eye consists. But then he made the mistake of calling the great nerve of the tentacle, and which is really the nerve of touch, the optic nerve; and so his statements were all put aside together. Professer Owen speaks very confidently on the subject, and in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons he has one of those wonderful preparations with which he has enriched that noble collection, in which the tentacles of Helix pomatia are extended so as to show the eye at the side of each extremity. In this position the eyes, the professor very justly observes, although destitute of appropriate muscles, have the advantage of all the mobility with which the tentacles themselves are endowed; while, by the admirable con struction of the tentacles, they are securely defended from external injury. It would be a difficult matter, probably, to find a person anywhere who had never seen a Snail draw in its horns on their being touched; but how many, we should like to know, have ever closely watched the Snail's manner of doing it? Those little horns, as the learned professor above mentioned properly says, are "admirable" contrivances, and the way in which they are so nimbly drawn in is not a little curious. The thing is easily seen, and any schoolboy may ascertain how it is done, the next time he stops a Snail in his travels across the footpath, and admonishes him, in the words of the old doggerel, "to shut up his house and go away home." The secret is, that the tentacle is a hollow tube, and in being withdrawn, it is simply inverted and retracted like the finger of a tight glove; only that the extremity, with the eye-spot upon it, is always the first part to disappear. The manner of it is best seen, perhaps, when, after the tentacle has been withdrawn, it is again protruded; as you can then readily discern that the organ is lengthened, not by being pushed out from its base, but by gradually unfolding itself, or being everted at the extremnity till the clubbed point appears, and the tentacle is fully extended. One cannot but admire the wisdom which thus gives the little Mollusc such a ready and effectual means of defending its rather oddly located visual organs. We speak of the wonderful contrivances connected with the human eye, but surely there is something here that is not much less wonderful. If we may rely on the experiments of Swammerdam, the Snail tribe have the sense of smell, as well as that of sight. The late |