Georg Wolfgang Knorr; Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch — Schnecken und Muscheln (1770)

night.

It is this indifference, so incomprehensible to the rational, that causes many to view shell-bearing animals either not at all, or as useless refuse of the earth and the water, or as toys for children; while, in the meantime, they make it their business to anxiously investigate whether the ancient Germans also consumed coffee, or whether Aristotle wore a goatee or a handlebar mustache.

Snails and mussels belong among the visible bodies, so there must be a reason why they exist, and indeed in a variety that can hardly be surveyed.

The busy imagination of painters designs various drawings of snails; but since their formation is born only in their imagination and is not to be found in nature, they remain merely a fancy.

But when one looks at the wonderful variety of these shell-bearing creatures in nature, their length, size, width, the order of their limbs, and in particular the multiplicity of their colors that can hardly be achieved by art, one becomes convinced that this is no work of blind chance, but of a being whose almighty wisdom is unlimited. Our God is in heaven; he can create what he will. Everything he wills, he does, in heaven, on earth, in the sea, and in all the depths.

To this Almighty being, so visible in his creatures, I dedicate this work; and after this, to all those who are obligated to acknowledge the Creator in the smallest creatures.

I live in the confidence that this undertaking of mine will be received not as pride, but with that love for humanity with which I have the honor and the pleasure to present it for the glorification of the Creator in his creatures and for the benefit and pleasure of my fellow men.