Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — A Snail’s Formidable Mouth. [ARTICLE]

A Snail’s Formidable Mouth.

“It is a fortunate thing for man and the rest of the auimal kingdom,” said the naturalist, “that no large wild animal has a mouth constructed with the devouring apparatus built on the plan of the insignificant looking snail’s mouth, for that animal could outdevour anything that lives. Tho snail'itself is such an unpleasant, Dot to say loathsome, creature to handle that few amateur naturalists care to bother with it, but by neglecting the snail they miss studying one of the most interesting objects that come under their observation. “Anyone who has noticed a snail feeding on a leaf must have wondered how such a soft, flabby, slimy animal can make such a sharp and clean-cut incision in the leaf, leaving an edge as smooth and straight as if it had been cut with a knife. That is due to the peculiar and formidable mouth he has. ’ The snail eats with his tongue and the roof of -his mouth. The tongue is a ribbon which the snail keeps in a coil in his month. This tongue is in reality a hand-saw, with the teeth on the surface instead of on the edge. The teeth are so small that ns many as 30,000 of them have been found on one snail's tongue. They are exceedingly sharp and only a few of them are used at a time. Not exactly only a few of them, but a few of them comparatively, for the snail will probably have 4,000 or 5,000 of them in use at once. He does this by means of his coiled tongue. He can uncoil as much of this os he chooses, and the uncoiled part he brings into service. The roof of his mouth is as hard as a bone. He grasps the leaf between his tongue and that hard substance and, rasping away with his tongue, saws through the toughest leaf with ease, always leaving the edge smooth and straight.”—[Exchange.