Punctum pygmaeum: the Sarbiewski snail

Sarbiewski, Cowley, Watts and the tininess of humanity

Before I really became interested in poetry, I had a thing about nature study in general, and snails in particular. The smallest British snail is called punctum pygmaeum, and if you magnify them significantly they look like this:

Punctum pygmaeum is Latin for ‘a very small point', ‘a tiny full-stop’ and these snails are really very little: the adult shel…