The Snail.
This creature, apparently so insignificant, is one of the greatest curiosities of nature. The animal consists of a soft, pulpy substance, with a curious shell, which serves as a house, and to which it always is attached. When the snail wishes to go from one place to another, he drags his shell along on his back; when he wishes to take some rest, or when he is frightened, he draws himself into his shell.
This little creature has almost as complete a set of the organs of life, as the larger animals: he has a mouth, eyes, tongue, brain, nerves, stomach, liver, heart, muscles, &c. But some of these are curiously contrived. Its eyes, for instance, it carries on the points of its long horns, which it passes about in various directions, thus seeing everything that is going on near it.
Under its two smaller horns, for it has four, is the snail’s mouth; and though it might seem too pulpy an animal to have teeth, yet it has eight of them, with which it devours leaves, and even bites off pieces of its own shell!
The snail is hatched from an egg; at first its shell is small, but it increases with the growth of the animal. If this shell gets broken, the creature straightway mends it, and makes it just as good as new. It is provided with a bag, in which it has a coloring matter for painting its shell.
At the approach of winter, the snail either retires to some hole, or buries itself in the earth, where it remains, in a torpid state, till spring. In some countries, snails are eaten as food, and they are so much esteemed in France, that the people raise thousands of them.