Word: snails
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Thousands of years ago, somewhere on the warm seacoasts of the North American continent, an Indian picked up a sea snail's shell, blew a tentative toot. He had a horn. Perhaps he did not catch on at once, but his horn was tuned naturally to a pentatonic (five-note) scale. The Indian and his friends contrived other instruments to thump and tootle with the snail's shell. By the time the Aztec civilization was at its height, and the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, the Indians were playing teponaxtles (wooden cylinders, with tongues inside producing two different notes...
...soundwaves striking the drum set up vibrations which are transmitted first through the tiny lever bones of the middle ear-the "hammer," "anvil," and "stirrup"-then through a tissue-thin window into the inner ear. On the other side of this window is the main sound-wave receiver, a snail-like bone sunk deep in the base of the skull, with communicating nerves to the brain...
Rome was not built in a day, but President Conant shows in his Annual Report that Harvard practically was. He outlines a history in which quiet periods of snail-paced growth alternate with violent outbursts of expansion, a history so uniquely American that it should be called a career rather than a development. The Harvard of today, with its capital of 143 million of dollars and its population of 8000, has sprung up within the last 90 years, though its name has been honored for over three centuries. Bur about ten years ago this rate of growth suddenly began...
...Maine the small saltwater gastropod that abounds on the rocky coast is known as a piniwinkle (all three i's short as in pin), although referred to as a periwinkle in other sections of the country. The winkle is the fleshy snail-like occupant that conceals itself in the protective shell...
...winkle to which the tank officer joco-grimly alluded is a snail served at English pubs. It is extracted with...