SOURCE: Alessio, Carolyn. “Evolutionary Ideas.” Chicago Tribune Books (3 March 1996): 9.

In the following review, Alessio compliments the essays in Dinosaur in a Haystack.

True or false: The shells of most snails coil to the left (sinistrally). False, according to Stephen Jay Gould in Dinosaur in a Haystack, the latest volume in his collection of monthly columns from Natural History magazine. Most snails' shells coil dextrally, or to the right, Gould says, despite the tendency of 17th century engravers to illustrate them in reverse. Gould examines this phenomenon in light of evolutionary history and its often unpredictable intersection with convention and circumstance. Engravers may have carved most organisms backwards, he theorizes, but we only notice the result for snails and for a few other asymmetrical creatures. “Such near universality,” Gould says, “might be regarded as a worthwhile convenience.”

The orientation of snails' coils is only one of the naturalistic subjects...