I have little more to add of the Teeth of a Snail, besides the Picture
Schem. 25.
Fig. 1.
of it, which is represented in the first Figure of the 25.
Scheme, save that his bended body, ABCDEF, which seem’d fashioned
very much like a row of small teeth, orderly plac’d in the Gums, and
looks as if it were divided into several smaller and
greater black teeth, was nothing but one small bended hard bone, which
was plac’d in the upper jaw of the mouth of a House-Snail, with which I
observ’d this very Snail to feed on the leaves of a Rose-tree, and to
bite out pretty large and half round bits, not unlike the Figure of a (C)
nor very much differing from it in bigness, the upper part ABCD of this
bone, I found to be much whiter, and to grow out of the upper chap of the
Snail, GGG, and not to be any thing neer so much creas’d as the lower and
blacker part of it HIIHKKH which was exactly shap’d like teeth, the bone
growing thinner, or tapering to an edge towards KKK. It seem’d to have
nine teeth, or prominent parts IK, IK, IF, &c. which were
join’d together by the thinner interpos’d parts of the bone. The Animal
to which these teeth belong, is a very anomalous creature, and
seems of a kind quite distinct from any other terrestrial Animal or
Insect, the Anatomy whereof exceedingly differing from what has been
hitherto given of it I should have inserted, but that it will be more
proper in another place. I have never met with any kind of Animal whose
teeth are all join’d in one, save onely that I lately observ’d, that all
the teeth of a Rhinocerot, which grow on either side of its mouth, are
join’d into one large bone, the weight of one of which I found to be neer
eleven pound Haverdupois. So that it seems one of the biggest sort
of terrestrial Animals, as well as one of the smallest, has his teeth
thus shap’d.