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Snail   Listen
noun
Snail  n.  
1.
(Zool.)
(a)
Any one of numerous species of terrestrial air-breathing gastropods belonging to the genus Helix and many allied genera of the family Helicidae. They are abundant in nearly all parts of the world except the arctic regions, and feed almost entirely on vegetation; a land snail.
(b)
Any gastropod having a general resemblance to the true snails, including fresh-water and marine species. See Pond snail, under Pond, and Sea snail.
2.
Hence, a drone; a slow-moving person or thing.
3.
(Mech.) A spiral cam, or a flat piece of metal of spirally curved outline, used for giving motion to, or changing the position of, another part, as the hammer tail of a striking clock.
4.
A tortoise; in ancient warfare, a movable roof or shed to protect besiegers; a testudo. (Obs.) "They had also all manner of gynes (engines)... that needful is (in) taking or sieging of castle or of city, as snails, that was naught else but hollow pavises and targets, under the which men, when they fought, were heled (protected),... as the snail is in his house; therefore they cleped them snails."
5.
(Bot.) The pod of the sanil clover.
Ear snail, Edible snail, Pond snail, etc. See under Ear, Edible, etc.
Snail borer (Zool.), a boring univalve mollusk; a drill.
Snail clover (Bot.), a cloverlike plant (Medicago scuttellata, also, Medicago Helix); so named from its pods, which resemble the shells of snails; called also snail trefoil, snail medic, and beehive.
Snail flower (Bot.), a leguminous plant (Phaseolus Caracalla) having the keel of the carolla spirally coiled like a snail shell.
Snail shell (Zool.), the shell of snail.
Snail trefoil. (Bot.) See Snail clover, above.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books



... at last came, that is to say, a day finally dawned upon a long and weary night of impatience; and then the hours until "one" were snail-paced, dreary, and innumerable. But even Stamboul, it is said, shall have an end, and there came an end to this long delay. The clock struck. As the last echo ceased, I stepped into ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... follow that false friend, your heart, which is such a foolish, tender thing that it makes others despise your head that have not half so good a one upon their own shoulders. In short, John, you may be a snail or a silk-worm, but by my consent you shall never be a ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... such haste, my brother?" The horse tossed his mane. "I'm in a hurry," he snorted, "because I'm made to go fast. Why, I can go ten miles while you crawl one! The world has no more use for a great white snail like you. But if you want speed, I'm just what you need. Watch how fast I go!" and clopperty, clopperty he was off down the road. As the ox watched the horse disappear he thought of what ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... science or learning. He lived in East Lane, Bermondsey; was a very corpulent man, and his legs were remarkably thick, probably from an anasarcous complaint. The writer of this remembers him perfectly well; he was a very stately man, and, when he walked, literally went at a snail's pace. He was a Dissenter, and every Sunday attended the meeting of Dr. Flaxman in the lower road to Deptford. He generally wore a fine coat, either red or brown, with gold lace buttons, and a fine silk embroidered waistcoat, of scarlet with gold lace, and a large and well-powdered ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again: when they lie upon the top of the water, look out the best Chub, which you setting your self in a fit place, may very easily do, and move your Rod as softly as a Snail moves, to that Chub you intend to catch; let your bait fall gently upon the water three or four inches before him, and he will infallibly take the bait, and you will be as sure to catch him; for he is one of the leather-mouth'd fishes, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... speed of between two and three miles per hour; the engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery—everything was so entirely novel to them—that even this snail's pace failed to prove wearisome, especially as ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... have seemed that Kitchener and his English made war as slowly as grass grows or orchards bear fruit. The horsemen of Araby, darting to and fro like swallows, must have felt as if they were menaced by the advance of a giant snail. But it was a snail that left a shining track unknown to those sands; for the first time since Rome decayed something was being made there that could remain. The effect of this growing road, one might almost say this living road, began to be felt. Mahmoud, the Mahdist military leader, ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... leaves of beets. Cabbage leaves, well cut, made their strong shields. They took their spears from the pond side—deadly pointed rushes they were, and they placed upon their heads helmets that were empty snail shells. So armed and so accoutered they were ready to meet the grand ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... in front of them, and the buildings of St. Swithun's Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the bishop's ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... not to fecundate the ova of the same body, but require the co-operation of two individuals, notwithstanding the co-existence in each of the organs of both sexes. Each in turn impregnates the other. The common leech, earth-worm, and snail, propagate in this manner. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... contention that all we see here is really crystallized thought. Our houses, our machinery, our chairs and tables, all that has been made by the hand of man is the embodiment of a thought. As the juices in the soft body of the snail gradually crystallize into the hard and flinty shell which it carries upon its back and which hides it, so everything used in our civilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible mind-stuff. The thought of James Watt in time congealed into a steam engine and revolutionized ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... of these things Miki tried. He would have eaten the frog, but Neewa was ahead of him there. The spruce and balsam gum clogged up his teeth and almost made him vomit because of its bitterness. Between a snail and a stone he could find little difference, and as the one bug he tried happened to be that asafoetida-like creature known as a stink-bug he made no further efforts in that direction. He also bit off a tender tip from a ground-shoot, but instead of a young poplar ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... snails, even if it were possible to obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore

... lane which led towards the common. This lane was scarcely wider than a path, and was only divided from the grounds of the villa by a ditch and a slight railing. I was intently occupied in examining an ant's nest, and the various evolutions performed by its black citizens on the sudden fall of a snail among them, which had dropt off a branch of dog-roses while I was gathering it, when all at once a sound as of many people running, joined to loud cries and vociferations, caught my ear. There was something ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... permitted Benjamin to go down into Egypt with his other sons. They also carried with them choice presents from their father for the ruler of Egypt, things that arouse wonder outside of Palestine, such as the murex, which is the snail that produces the Tyrian purple, and various kinds of balm, and almond oil, and pistachio oil, and honey as hard as stone. Furthermore, Jacob put double money in their hand to provide against a rise in prices in the meantime. And after all these matters were attended to, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... weather. It was scented by a great beau-pot filled with roses; and, besides, the casement was open to the fragrant court. Mr. Buxton was so large, and the parlor so small, that when he was once in, Maggie thought when he went away, he could carry the room on his back, as a snail does its house. ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... up to the knees, in the direction opposite Gloucester Point, and near a point opposite to the enemy's fleet of gunboats. Through mud and water we floundered and fell, the night being dark. Mile after mile we marched at a snail's gait until we came to a large opening, surrounded by a rail fence. This was about midnight. Here we were ordered to build great fires of the rails near by. This was done, and soon the heavens were lit up by this great ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... in, it was concluded that he was guilty. At other times, a bar of red hot iron was passed along the leg, or the arm was thrust into scalding water, and if the natural effect followed, the person's head was immediately struck off. Snail shells, applied to the temples, if they stuck, inferred guilt. When a dispute arose between man and man, the plan was, to place shells on the heads of both, and make them stoop, when he, from off whose head the shell first dropped, had a verdict found against him. While we wonder ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... it in brown paper, mostly. Cows free in woods. Alligator tail good. Snail built up just like a conch (whelk). They eat good. Worms like a conch. Bile conch. Git it out shell. Grind it sausage grinder. Little onion. Black pepper. Rather eat conch than any kind of nourishment ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... Confederates made good progress, their route unimpeded by wagons and artillery. But after the junction of Gordon's corps with Mahone and Early, with thirty miles of wagons, containing the special plunder of the Post Doctors, Quartermasters and Post Commissaries of Richmond, they went at a snail's pace, and it would have been no trouble for an enterprising enemy to have overtaken them. Until they arrived at Amelia Courthouse, on the 4th of April, although a body of the enemy had followed them up, no attack had been made, and it was only after leaving the Courthouse ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman

... drawing out the lenticular body, there proceeded from the vagina a minute part, v. adhering to the posterior end of the lentil, and situated below the plates. It spontaneously retracted into the lentil, like the horns of a snail. It appeared white, very short, and cylindrical. Under the pincers was a little half coagulated seminal fluid at the bottom of the vulva. Though much could be expressed, there was none pure; it was almost liquid, but soon coagulated, and formed a whitish inorganic mass. This observation ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... they go to Scheveningen, and this is certainly their heaven. To stand on the pier on a fine day during the season looking down on these long lines of wicker chairs, turned seaward, is an astonishing sight. They are shaped somewhat like huge snail-shells, and around these the children delight to dig in the sand, throwing up miniature dunes around one. Perhaps no seashore in the world has been painted so much as Scheveningen. Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, to name only ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... make mountains of molehills. The whole road from Calais to Ghent is as flat and as straight as the road to Longford. We never knew when we came to what the innkeeper and postillions call mountains, except by the postillions getting off their horses with great deliberation and making them go a snail's walk—a snail's gallop would be much too fast. Now it is no easy thing for a French postillion to walk himself when he is in his boots: these boots are each as large and as stiff as a wooden churn, and when the man ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... with his head thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if there had been crowded half a dozen gigantic specimens of human ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... was the order now, and as we crept in not a sound was heard but that of the regular beat of the paddle-floats, still dangerously loud in spite of our snail's pace. Suddenly Burroughs ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... not imitate me there; I postponed my happiness too long, and were I to commence life again, I should not crawl with such a snail's pace towards it as formerly. But I have no fear of you or that my joints will be too stiff to dance on ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... tendons and membranes, and even bones, acquire new sensations; and the parts of mutilated animals, as of wounded snails and polypi and crabs, are reproduced; and at the same time acquire sensations adapted to their situation. Thus when the head of a snail is reproduced after decollation with a sharp razor, those curious telescopic eyes are also reproduced, and acquire their sensibility to light, as well as their adapted muscles for retraction on the approach ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... ordinary works as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice done to them. People are at a loss how to treat them; so they leave them alone, and go their own snail's pace for themselves. Does the worm see the eagle as it ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... oftentimes trickle downe the cheekes of him that seeth or heareth some joyfull newes, so I being in this fearfull perplexity, could not forbeare laughing, to see how of Aristomenus I was made like unto a snail [in] his shell. And while I lay on the ground covered in this sort, I peeped under the bed to see what would happen. And behold there entred in two old women, the one bearing a burning torch, and the other a sponge and a naked sword; ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave, charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle's people ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... ground, climbing almost hidden in the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot this bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway. It was a cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't move. It didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with it. We shall remake it. But certainly it won't go any quicker. That can't ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... comes his Excellence Baron de Goldburg, Leading the Dowager Duchess of Snail; Feathers and fringe on the top of her bonnet, Roses and rings on the ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn't to know all that, and I'm bound to say that there was plenty of excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though we must have made it over fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail's pace; and those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By Jove, it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under branches with your face in the mane! I told you about the forest of dead ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... berline, and putting all "to rights," the whips cracked, bells jingled, and away we thundered by the arrowy Rhone. I had had the idea that a diligence was a rickety, slow-moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable equipoise ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... snail, this means Chinamen, it does there is no doubt that to be right is more than perfect there is no doubt and glass is confusing it confuses the substance which was of a color. Then came the time for discrimination, ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... by a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when "creeping like snail unwillingly" to morning ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... sought fools and charlatans to tell their fortunes, when a little wine is clearer than the most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell. Palmistry and astrology—let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity! But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another drop, and how futile are all ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... Like a huge snail, along the wall; There stuck aloft in public view, And with small ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... walking slowly and the kind clergyman attributed her leisurely pace to dejection, but as a matter of fact, Edith was feeling quite happy and much interested in the tiny bright yellow snail shells the beach was providing for entertainment. She had been spared all that was possible of the depression and sorrow of the past weeks. Daddy had been poorly for years and Edith could not remember him as ever well and strong. His loss affected her more because it ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... afterwards to appear to the naked eye an exceeding small white spot, no bigger than the point of a Pin. Afterwards I view'd it every way with a better Microscope and found it on both sides, and edge-ways, to resemble the Shell of a small Water-Snail with a flat spiral Shell: it had twelve wreathings, a, b, c, d, e, &c. all very proportionably growing one less than another toward the middle or center of the Shell, where there was a very small round white spot. I could not certainly discover whether the Shell were ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... did not cross the Hudson until the 4th of December, moving snail-like, although he knew that Washington's army was in ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... a dark path through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grew stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony, torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to Christina's eyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side like a snail or a fly. She quite gasped for breath at the very sight, and was told in return to wait and see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, or Eagle's Ladder. Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic scenery; she knew that jagged peaks made ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... they would not touch any portion of such a snake with their hands: even its skin was supposed by these people to be noxious. Down came the rain; I believe it could not have rained harder. Mrs. Baker in the palanquin was fortunately like a snail in her shell; but I had nothing for protection except an oxhide: throwing myself upon my angarep I drew it over me. The natives had already lighted prodigious fires, and all crowded around the blaze; but what would have been the Great Fire ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... house was an overwhelming incubus. I was like a miserable snail, forever lugging my house round on my back—unable to shake it off. A change in our mode of life would not necessarily in itself bring my children any nearer to me; it would, on the contrary, probably antagonize them. I had sowed the seed and I was reaping the harvest. My professional life ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... hole in a ring, looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... effect this, he did the next thing to it, and employed all the restoratives suggested by Luke Hatton. He bathed in milk, breakfasted on snail-broth, and swallowed a strange potion prepared for him by the apothecary, which the latter affirmed would make a new man of him and renovate all his youthful ardour. It certainly had produced an extraordinary effect; and when he presented himself before Aveline, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... the time! I laughed outright at the idea. Why, with the prospect of meeting Gwen Darrow before him, an absolute unit of measure, with a snail's pace, would have made good its escape from him. As it is a trick of poor humanity to refuse when offered the very thing one has been madly scheming to obtain, I hastened to accept Darrow's invitation for my friend, and to assure him on my own responsibility, that ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... and dispersed in either direction like sheep before a dog—all except one man, who, walking with two sticks, could not move above a snail's pace. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... tall and others short, some straight and others crooked, some strong, others feeble; some of us run, others walk, others snail it. But all, all have their feet upon the same level of the common earth. And America's worst enemy is he—or she—who by word or look encourages another to think otherwise. Head as high as you please; but feet always upon the common ground, ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan

... the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering was a distant grimacing and mockery at my troubled ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... "No, thank you; never again. I did flying enough last night to last me a lifetime. For the rest of my life I'm going to crawl—crawl like a snail. But come along, you two, I must take ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... hands and knees, no faster than a snail, feeling every inch of the ground. The surface was wet and slippery, and in places sloped at an angle that made me hang on for dear life to keep from shooting ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... opens the parcel. Another mode of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, and then, say the folks, as the snail dies so ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... were, raised from the dead; and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious coincidence! a very amusing occurrence! to see such a similarity of feelings between the two [Greek text]! for so the Greeks called both the shell-snail and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... smart : eleganta; doloreti. smear : sxmiri. smell : flari, odori. smelt : fandi. smock : kitelo. smoke : fumi, (fish, etc.) fumajxi. smooth : glata, ebena. smother : sufoki. smuggle : kontrabandi. snail : heliko. snake : serpento. sneeze : terni. snore : ronki. snowdrop : galanto. so : tiel, tiamaniere. "—much", tiom. soak : trempi. soap : sap'o, -umi. sober : sobra, serioza. social : sociala. society : socio, societo. socket : ingo. sod : bulo. soda : sodo. sofa : sofo, kanapo. soft : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... it hath been seene within half a mile of Horsam, a wondre no doubt most terrible and noysome to the inhabitants thereabouts. There is always in his tracke or path, left a glutinous and slimy matter (as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snail) which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, in so much that they perceive the air to be putrified withall, which must needs be very dangerous: for though the corruption of it cannot strike the outward parts of a man, unless heated into blood, yet by ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley

... that," he mutters, "now I come to think of it. Only natural they should be going at snail's pace. Carrai! the wonder is the gringo being able for even that, or go at all. I thought I'd given him his quietus, for surely I sent my spear right through his ribs! It must have struck button, or buckle, or something, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... firmly grasping with extended hands the tough grass-roots, and writhing forward as noiselessly as if I were stalking some prey. There were times when I advanced so slowly it would have puzzled a watcher to determine whether mine was not also the body of the dead. At length, even at that snail's rate of progress, I gained the protection of the tepees upon the other side of the camp, and skulked in among them. The lodge just before me, blackened by paint and weather, must be the one I sought. I rested close within its shadow, striving to assure myself there ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... the priests clasped her robe to draw her back, but she turned on him with the spear, whereon he shrank back into his litter like a snail into his shell and left her alone. So following the steep path they marched on, and after them came the two litters with the priests, carried by all the bearers who could still stand, for these old men weighed no more than ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... and retreated to a long belt of fine open forest which was close behind him. There was no resisting the invitation upon such favourable ground, and immediately dismounting, we followed him. I now found that my leg was nearly useless, and I could only move at a snail's pace, and even then with great pain. Upon reaching the forest, we found that the rogue had decamped, not wishing to meet us in such advantageous ground. We followed his tracks for a few hundred yards through the wood, till we suddenly emerged upon a large tract ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... right!" thinks I, "they're back in their camp, and haven't discovered Johnny yet. I'll snail him out of there." ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... chariot of a snail's fine shell, Which for the colours did excel, The fair Queen Mab becoming well, So lively was the limning; The seat the soft wool of the bee, The cover, gallantly to see, The wing of a pied butterflee; I ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... orifice of the shell to the glass with resin, (propolis), and thus it became a prisoner for life." Now the instinct that prompts the gathering of propolis in August, and filling every crack, flaw, or inequality about the hive, would cement the edges of the snail-shell to the glass, and a small stone, block of wood, chip, or any substance that they are unable to remove, would be fastened with it in the same manner. The edges or bottom of the hive, when in close ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... a while, you hard-working farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen—like some Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they won't improve so's to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... was the inner nest, composed of strips of soft bark. Assembling this latter material I found that when compressed with the hands its bulk was about the size of a baseball. Among the decaying leaves near the base of the nest three beetles and a small snail had ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... progression, the stomach sways the world; the data supplied by food are the chief of all the documents of life. Well, in spite of his innocent appearance, the Lampyris is an eater of flesh, a hunter of game; and he follows his calling with rare villainy. His regular prey is the Snail. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... rude a salutation, the great Sphinx stopped short, and bridling up herself, drew in her head, like a snail when it touches something that it does not like: the bulls set up a horrid bellowing, the crickets sounded an alarm, and Gog and Magog advanced before the rest. One of these powerful brothers had in his hand a great pole, to the extremity of which was fastened a cord of about two feet in length, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't make a mite of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... associate, and, telling him he could follow, if he pleased, ascended the stairs. They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The green damp hung upon the low walls; the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light of the candle; but all was still ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... sage, and there were no rocks. Soon, out of the pale gloom shone a still paler thing, and that was the low swell of slope. Venters mounted it and his dogs walked beside him. Once upon the stone he slowed to snail pace, straining his sight to avoid the pockets and holes. Foot by foot he went up. The weird cedars, like great demons and witches chained to the rock and writhing in silent anguish, loomed up with wide and twisting naked arms. Venters ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... angry, because she had not a new coach too. Therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained to the king that he had behaved very insolently to her. The king sent for him in a rage. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into an empty snail-shell, and there lay till he was almost starved; when peeping out of the shell, he saw a fine butterfly settled on the ground. He now ventured out, and getting astride, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... ground; and also by having recourse to lime, in the preparation of the land for such crops. They conceal themselves in the holes and crevices, only making their appearance early in mornings and late in the evenings. The white slug or snail is likewise very destructive to young turnip crops, by rising out of the holes of the soils, on wet and dewy mornings and evenings. Rolling the ground with a heavy implement, before the sun rises, has been advised as a means of destroying them in these cases. Slugs of this sort ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... girls, at slug and snail And their kindred look askance. Pay your footing on the nail: Fate's ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... in the first portion of the manuscript, relating in part to pregnancy and child-birth (see the pictures of women on p. 16, et seq.), he wears on his head several times a figure occurring very frequently just in this part of the Dresden Codex and apparently representing a snail (compare Dr. 12b and 13b), which among the Aztecs is likewise a symbol of parturition. In view of these variations in the pictures of the Dresden Codex, it is very striking that in the Codex Tro.-Cortesianus, there is only one invariable ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... talk of these matters better at Salzburg. But one thing more—only fancy how Herr Grimm deceived me, saying that I was going by the diligence, and should arrive at Strassburg in five days; and I did not find out till the last day that it was quite another carriage, which goes at a snail's pace, never changes horses, and is ten days on the journey. You may easily conceive my rage; but I only gave way to it when with my intimate friends, for in his presence I affected to be quite merry and pleased. When I got into the ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... to kill a snail; The best man among them durst not touch her tail. She put out her horns like a little Kyloe cow. Run, tailors, run, or she'll kill you ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown

... Man considers that he has the right of selection—quite a mistake of his I'm sure, for he has no real sense of beauty or fitness, and generally selects most vilely. All the same he is an obstinate brute, and sticks to his brutish ideas as a snail sticks to its shell. I am an obstinate brute!—I am absolutely convinced that I have the right to choose my own woman, if I want one—which I don't,—or if ever I do want ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... at the same time, we think, a universal and important fact, that love permeates the universe. Even a female snail, if we could only put the question, would undoubtedly admit that ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... common garden-snail, "I'm more in demand than any other snail in the world; you'll find me all over the flower-beds in the summer, and in the winter I lie in the wood-shed in a cabbage tub. They call me uninteresting, but they can't do ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... response; "but I will not trespass upon your hospitality if you will kindly direct me to the inn of which you speak. The darkness came on so suddenly that I lost my way. I left Oreana at noon to go to Humboldt, but my horse sprained his foot on the rough mountain road, and I have had to come at a snail's pace ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... was the apprentice boy, Horatio. His employer said, "Horatio, did you ever see a snail?" "I—think—I—have," he drawled out. "You must have met him then, for I am sure you never overtook one," said the "boss." Your creditor will meet you or overtake you and say, "Now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you have not done it, you must give me your note." ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum

... could very well remember that there had been a great many more of them; that they had descended from a large family. They led a very retired and happy life and, as they had no children, they had adopted a little common snail which they brought up as their own child. But the little thing would not grow, for he was only a common snail, although the mother declared that he was getting too large for his shell. And when the father noticed how small their child was, she told him to feel the little snail's shell, ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... snail. The unfavorable weather constantly throws me back, and at these baths it is impossible to command one's natural strength. A few days ago, Naegeli, a musical author and poet of considerable repute, wrote to me from Zurich; he is about to publish 200 poems, and among these ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... first point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... out of its place. It is much the same with lads and girls; you can't put all boys to one trade, nor send all girls to the same service. One chap will make a London clerk, and another will do better to plough, and sow, and reap, and mow, and be a farmer's boy. It's no use forcing them; a snail will never run a race, nor a mouse drive ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... at a snail pace the howling of the wintry gale continued unabated, with the roar of the wind through the tree-tops ashore, the dash of the waves on the point above, and the constant wabbling motion of the shanty-boat to remind them of ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... left him. Ther wor noa danger o' anybody gettin that horse to goa at maar nor three miles i'th' haar, for it wor booath laim an' blind, an' seem'd varry mich inclined to drop on its knees at ivvery step. It started off at snail pace, but even that wor ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... great antiquarian, scientist and courtier to resume, amusing myself meantime by turning over the leaves of an official report by the Minister of War on a new and improved process of making thunder from snail slime. Presently ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... no railroads in China worth mentioning, so traveling has to be done by highroad, or by river and canal; and, as this last, though easy, is a very slow way, it is a good thing when, like the snail, a traveler can take ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse cafe of a sunset. Then when the cold and the dark surged back, by the light ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... except that of the soldier, distinguished by the greatest exposure and privation. The occupation of a boatman was more calculated to destroy the constitution and to shorten life than any other business. In ascending the river it was a continued series of toil, rendered more irksome by the snail-like rate at which they moved. The boat was propelled by poles, against which the shoulder was placed, and the whole strength and skill of the individual were applied in this manner. As the boatmen moved along the running board, with their heads nearly touching the plank on which they walked, the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... and I am determined to fulfil my destination. Why, if spirits like ours were not produced every now and then, the world would absolutely go fast asleep, but we rouse it by deranging the old order of things, force mankind to quicken their snail's pace, furnish a million of idlers with riddles which they puzzle their brains about without being able to comprehend, infuse some hundreds of new ideas into the heads of the great multitude, and, in short, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... mount plodded slowly along the dusty road. For hours the man had not been able to urge the beast out of a walk. The loss of time consequent upon his having followed wrong roads during the night and the exhaustion of the pony which retarded his speed to what seemed little better than a snail's pace seemed to assure the failure of his mission, for at best he could not reach Lustadt ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the cause of humanity, but rather, if anything, the cause of everything else. At its noblest it meant a sort of mystical identification of our life with the whole life of nature. So a man might wince when a snail was crushed as if his toe were trodden on; so a man might shrink when a moth shrivelled as if his own hair had caught fire. Man might be a network of exquisite nerves running over the whole universe, a subtle spider's web of pity. This was a fine conception; ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... parish allowance was stopped when you was fourteen. It shan't be said of us that bare we took you in and bare we turn you out. But marry you must. It's ordained o' nature. There's the difference atwixt a slug and a snail. The snail's got her own house to go into. A slug hasn't. When she's uncomfortable she ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... "the Wabashas," and from them, in later years, we derive the familiar name of Wabash. A curious tradition of this people, according to the journal of Lewis and Clark, is that the founder of the nation was a snail, passing a quiet existence along the banks of the Osage, till a high flood swept him down to the Missouri, and left him exposed on the shore. The heat of the sun at length ripened him into a man; but with the change of his nature he had not forgotten his native seats on the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... a horse, the only four-footed transportation possibly obtainable, and started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through with him." He could go only at a snail's pace, and when I reached Fredericksburg it must have been nine o'clock. I crossed the pontoon bridge, which had been laid the morning before under circumstances of the greatest gallantry by ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors were ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... but at snail's pace. There followed five years of economy so rigid as to make the past seem profligate. Etta, the acid-tongued, the ferret-faced, was not the sort to go off without the impetus of a dowry. The man for Etta, the shrew, must be kindly, long-suffering, subdued—and in need of a ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... heap, as though carelessly thrown in, a quantity of the same; and I could see also from all the surrounding circumstances, especially the pallid faces of the crowd, that there was something sad about it all. The horse moved slowly along, at almost a snail's pace, while behind walked a poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and each with a hand on the tail-board of the cart. They were evidently ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... needs a cranny for hers, which is contained in a non-waterproof felt. In a heap of stones, well exposed to the sun, she will choose a large slab to serve as a roof. She lodges her pill underneath it, in the company of the hibernating Snail. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... I intend sending this letter by the packet of the 24th inst., and am in hopes of sending with it some intelligence from those from whom I have been so long expecting something. Everything moves at a snail's pace here. I find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... spring has other properties besides its steady temperature. I was early abroad in my garden last Thursday week, and in the act of tossing a snail over my box hedge, when I heard some girls' voices giggling, and caught a glimpse of half-a-dozen sun-bonnets gathered about the well. Straightening myself up, I saw a group of maids from the village, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think that heaven and happiness is for them. But stay, there are many more that run than there be that obtain; therefore ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... up and down in this mood. Great God, I could work all day and all night if I could do what you do, but to strain at iron fetters—a snail! Oh, I cannot tell you—I simply groan under it. At such times I have no more idea of marrying you than of journeying to the moon. I repeat to you, to be constantly choked back, while you are rapidly ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... that I am afraid of being there, In the little green orchard; Why, when the moon's been bright, Shedding her lonesome light, And moths like ghosties come, And the horned snail leaves home: I've sat there, whispering and listening there, In the little ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... Bayswater at a snail's pace, and with more stoppages than ever mortal omnibus was subjected to before, as it seemed to that one eager passenger. At last the fading foliage of the Park appeared between the hats and bonnets of Valentine's opposite neighbours. Even those orange tawny trees reminded ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... "Georgetown Loop," crept at a snail's pace—for that is the natural gait of the burro—through the town of Silver Plume, and pursued our leisurely journey toward the beckoning, snow-clad heights beyond. No, we did not hurry, for two reasons: First, our little ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... means of which they swim on the water. They appear not to be able to free themselves from this mass of bubbles: every shell I have yet found floating in the Indian Ocean possesses these bubbles in a greater or less degree; they were of a purple colour. I have seen the common garden snail in England emit a nearly similar consistency: they also emit a blue or purple liquid, which colours ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... was a hansom drawn by a snail. The automobile, running without lights, went no faster, kept a certain distance behind us all the way from the Place Pigalle to the apartment of Mademoiselle Reneaux. What have you to say to that? Furthermore, when Mademoiselle Reneaux had persuaded me to ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... seems, had been crucified more than fifteen hundred years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... surgeon and Williams the colonel chafed at the incessant delays. "The expedition goes on very much as a snail runs," writes the former to his wife; "it seems we may possibly see Crown Point this time twelve months." The Colonel was vexed because everything was out of joint in the department of transportation: wagoners mutinous for want of pay; ordnance stores, camp-kettles, and provisions left behind. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that "perhaps," if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sweet responsive sympathy of tones; So the fair flower expands it's lucid form To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm;— 15 For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath, My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe; Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, 20 Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... said Fancy, and put two slender white shells for feet, at the lower edge of the fringed skirt. She laid a wreath of little star-fish across the brown hair, a belt of small orange-crabs round the waist, buttoned the dress with violet snail-shells, and hung a tiny white pebble, like a pearl, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... accordingly, murmuring at the cowardice of the servants; but at such a snail's pace, that it seemed he would most willingly have been anticipated by any one whom his reproaches had roused to exertion. "Cowardly blockheads!" he said at last, seizing hold of the handle of the door, but without turning it effectually ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... trying, and appealed pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute. Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone. That lady made a final appeal to the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... slightly bent, and a blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus—spiders with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs, and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the bushes. Moreover, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... centres.' At home his little weaknesses do not strike you. You may not be on the spot when he flies across Piccadilly Circus, pursued, as he fancies, by a Brompton omnibus which has not yet reached St. James's Church, and is moving at a snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train which ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... a very lonely and happy life; and as they had no children themselves, they had adopted a little common snail, which they brought up as their own; but the little one would not grow, for he was of a common family; but the old ones, especially Dame Mother Snail, thought they could observe how he increased in size, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... chronology. We had a craze for big figures, and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb in a month was represented in prehistoric time by ages and ages. We insisted that Evolution advanced more slowly than any snail ever crawled, and that Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds. This was all very well as long as we were dealing with such acquired habits as breathing or digestion. It was possible to believe that dozens of epochs had gone to the slow building up ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... my prayers to God. I am thinking that I may be likened to stagnant water, that is not good, that nobody drinks, and that does not run down in brooks, upon the banks of which kumara and trees grow. My heart is all rock, all rock, and no good thing will grow upon it. The lizard and the snail run over the rocks, and all evil ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... shins with leaves of mallows, and had breastplates made of fine green beet-leaves, and cabbage-leaves, skilfully fashioned, for shields. Each one was equipped with a long, pointed rush for a spear, and smooth snail-shells to cover their heads. Then they stood in close-locked ranks upon the high bank, waving their spears, and were filled, each of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... yellow earth became comparatively level across its upper surface, again closely resembling a river deposit. The darker earth above it contained a greater amount than heretofore of ashes, bones in small pieces, potsherds, mussel, snail, and periwinkle shells, and the like. More charred corn was found ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... couple of eggs comfortably, and this was covered outside with tortoise-shell and lined with lizard-skin. From the little green frogs that hop about the meadows she selected fifty to act as maids of honour, and each of these was mounted on a snail. They had dainty saddles, and rode in dashing style with the leg thrown over the saddle-bow. A numerous bodyguard of rats, dressed like pages, ran before the snails—in short, nothing so captivating had ever been seen before. To crown all, the cap of roses, ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... the land of fire," he said, "Frame me a soul like thine: Swift as the snail's soft horn to feel, Yet hard and keen as the tempered steel, And be there a fire in heart and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... tailors Went to kill a snail, The best man among them Durst not touch her tail. She put out her horns Like a little Kyloe cow: Run, tailors, run, Or she'll kill you ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous

... to send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling him what he had found, and that he should go at once to New York, and then hastened to the railway station. He had to wait an hour for a train, and when it did start it seemed to go at a snail's pace. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... a snail, Neaulme, whom he withheld, scarcely moved at all. The sheets were not regularly sent him as they were printed. He thought there was some trick in the manoeuvre of Duchesne, that is, of Guy who acted for him; and perceiving the terms of the agreement ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... thy noontide walks avail, To clear the leaf, and pick the snail, Then wantonly to death decree An insect usefuller than thee? Thou and the worm are brother-kind, As low, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Gosport shore, on which, being carefully landed, it was set up in its proper position, facing the harbour. Great, as may be supposed, was the consternation of the 'Relief' when it arrived at the post, to find sentry-box and sentry gone. The soldier could not have walked off with it as a snail does its shell on its back. A rigid search was instituted, but no sign of sentry or box could be discovered, and the sentry at the Dockyard gates, having also been snoozing at the time, had neither seen nor heard anything unusual. The captain of the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... a racing man had nothing on that Forette. And yet the next day, when he came to take the car away, after we'd charged the storage battery, he drove like a snail. One of my men went with him a little way, to see that everything was all right, for Mr. Carwell is very particular—I mean he was—and Forette didn't let her out for a cent My man was disappointed, for he's a fast devil, too, and he asked the Frenchman ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... with a snort of unbelief, and, seizing an oar, shoved it down over the side. And straight down it went till the water wet his hand. There was no bottom! Then we were dumbfounded. The wind was whistling by, and still the Mist was moving ahead at a snail's pace. There seemed something dead about her, and it was all I could do at the tiller to keep her from swinging up ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... 26, 55; Bachaumont, I. 136 (Sept 7,1762). One month after the Parliament had passed a law against the Jesuits, little Jesuits in wax appeared, with a snail for a base. "By means of a thread the Jesuit was made to pop in and out from the shell. It is all the rage—here is no house without ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as communities we have progressed more than we believe, as some future reaction to this war may indicate, but what is brought to the surface now is the old fact that the progress of groups of men is at snail's pace, however men may forge ahead ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... of twigs or leaves cut to a suitable length and laid side by side in a long spirally-coiled band, forming the wall of a subcylindrical cavity. The cavity of the tube of Helicopsyche, composed of grains of sand, is itself spirally coiled, so that the case exactly resembles a small snail-shell in shape. One species of Limnophilus uses small but entire leaves; another, the shells of the pond-snail Planorbis; another, pieces of stick arranged transversely with reference to the long axis of the tube. To admit ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... fast as it was possible it seemed but a snail's pace to Elizabeth. She could realize nothing but that her father was in danger. After hearing Nora's reasons for this sudden journey, she spoke no word but sat rigid, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... its course in 24 hours, it would have gone a thousand feet, that is 300 braccia, which is the sixth of a mile. Whence it would follow that the course of the sun during the day would be the sixth part of a mile and that this venerable snail, the sun will have travelled 25 braccia an ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... of the animal kingdom in virtue of certain apparently slight though really fundamental resemblances which they present. But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom 'Vertebrata', because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same Class, 'Mammalia'; men and apes as members of the same Order, 'Primates'; and if there ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... is the part of the internal ear directly concerned in hearing. It consists of a coiled tube which makes two and one half turns around a central axis and bears a close resemblance to a snail shell (Figs. 151 and 152). It differs in plan from a snail shell, however, in that its interior space is divided into three distinct channels, or canals. These lie side by side and are named, from their relations to other parts, the scala vestibula, the scala tympani, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... truth, I generally go about In strict incognito; and yet one likes To wear one's orders upon gala days. I have no ribbon at my knee; but here At home, the cloven foot is honourable. 265 See you that snail there?—she comes creeping up, And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something. I could not, if I would, mask myself here. Come now, we'll go about from fire to fire: I'll be the Pimp, and you shall be the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... get the rascals, did you, Mr. Narkom?" Cleek was saying. "I feared as much; but I couldn't get word to you sooner. We injured the machine in that mad race to the mill, and of course we had to come at a snail's pace afterwards. I'm sorry we didn't get Margot—sorrier still that that hound Merode got away. They are bound to make more trouble before the race is run. Not for her ladyship, however, and not for this dear little chap. Their troubles are at an end, and the sacred son will be a sacred ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... would have travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. Thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... asked Benassis. "I shall not bring you any more rice pudding nor snail broth! No more fresh dates and white bread for you! So you want to die and break your ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... by his day's work and MARY'S stupidity, from now on absolutely brutish]. You've had time to cook a dozen meals. You're as slow as a snail. What did you do all the time we were in ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... fifty-four. And when I saw him a week ago, he looked like sixty-four. His eyes were as yellow as the slime of a garden snail and bloodshot from drunkenness; but also because he'd shed tears of blood over his vices and misery. His face was brown and swollen like a piece of liver on a butcher's table, and he hid himself from men's eyes out of shame—up ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... caused the separation of an equivalent quantity of insoluble carbonate of lime, which, layer by layer, built up the mound. A fragment of the rock which I possess contains leaves, twigs, hazel nuts, and snail shells, which, falling from time to time upon it, were incrusted and finally imprisoned in ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... express; but you just raise your eyes, my friend, and look at that bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... extended back through the ranks, for each succeeding line lost a modicum in the length of the step, till at the rear they were pushing hard and barely moving. No wonder they sobbed, prayed, panted, surged, swayed and pressed. How they reviled the snail-like leaders, not knowing that the sturdy pace lagged in the body of the multitude. So they hasted and progressed only inch ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller



Words linked to "Snail" :   garden snail, meat, snail bean, pull together, snail flower, snail mail, Helix pomatia, snail-flower, snail darter, escargot, garner, collect, cinnamon snail, scorpion shell



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