The Gastropoda, or crawling mollusks, have a head, and are consequently animals of a higher organization than the Conchifera or bivalve class. Their mantle forms a vaulted chamber over the head and neck, and envelopes the foot or crawling-disk; all these the animal can protrude or draw in at pleasure. The head is of a globular form, with two or four exceedingly sensitive tentacles, arranged in pairs on each side of it, as in the garden snail, which has four, two long and two short. These tentacles, which the snail can push out and draw in at pleasure, are hollow tubes, the walls of which are composed of circular bands of muscle. The tentacles are pushed out by the alternate contractions of these circular bands, but they are drawn in again like the inverted finger of a glove by muscular cords proceeding to the internal extremity of the tentacle from the muscle that withdraws the foot. The structure of the tentacles is the same in all the crawling mollusks; they are most sensitive in the Helix or Snail family, but they are believed to be delicate organs of touch in all.
The Gastropod mollusks never have more than two eyes, either placed on the tips, or at the base of one pair of tentacles; in the snail they may be seen as black points on the tips of the longest pair. In some of the higher Gastropods they are of great beauty, and appear to be perfectly adapted for distinct vision. Organs of hearing were discovered by Dr. Siebold at the base of one of the pairs of tentacles, consisting of vesicles containing a liquid and calcareous otolites, which perform remarkable oscillations due to the action of vibratile cilia. In the Snail and Slug group the number of otolites varies from eighty to one hundred.
The mouth of a Gastropod is a proboscis, with fleshy lips, generally armed with horny plates or spines on the jaws. The Snail has a crescent-shaped cutting plate on its jaw, and a soft bifid lip below, but the tongue is the most remarkable microscopic object in this group of Mollusca. In the terrestrial Gastropods, it is short and entirely contained within the nearly globular head. It is tubular behind, but in front it is spread into a nearly flat narrow plate, traversed by numerous rows of minute recurved teeth, or spines set upon flattened plates; in the Garden Snail or Slug each principal tooth has its own plate. Fig. 170 represents a magnified portion of a Snail’s tongue by Dr. Carpenter; the rows at the edge are separated to show the structure. The teeth are set close one to another, and are often very numerous. In the Helix pomatia, a snail found in the middle and southern counties of England, they amount to 21,000, and in the great slug (Arion ater), there are 26,800. This kind of tongue only serves for rasping vegetable food. All the Trochidæ, which are marine mollusks that are supposed by some naturalists to live on fuci, are remarkable for the length and beauty of their narrow spiny tongues. Fig. 171 is a small portion of the tongue or palate of the Trochus zizyphinus, highly magnified; the large teeth of the lateral bands, as well as the small teeth in the centre, have minutely serrated edges. Fig. 172 shows the Trochus granulatus in the act of crawling.