Evonne Dixon, age 11, of Winston Salem, . SC,, for her question:

To what class do the snails belong?

The snails belong in the phylum Mollusca   meaning the soft bodied ones. They are distantly related to the graceful conche, the oyster, the clam and the tentacled octopus. Most, but not all of the mollusks cover their soft bodies with crusty shells, Mr. Slow Poke Snail carries his shell on his back and uses it as a house. His close cousins the slugs do not have shells.

The Mollusca phylum is subdivided into five classes. The slugs and the snails belong in the class Gastropoda   the stomach footed ones. Mr. Slow Poke travels on a corrogated foot which covers the entire underside of his stomach. He does, in fact, walk on his stomach   which is why he is a gastropod. Altogether, including snails and slugs, there are nearly 50,000 different known gastropods in the world.