The story of the Bermuda Land Snail is also the tale of a young man looking for a subject to build a career on -- who later became a leading scientist.

Famed Harvard professor Steven Jay Gould stumbled onto the natural history of the Poecilozonites genus and 19 other species of land snails which had dominated the Bermuda landscape for millennia.

Dr. Gould is famous among armchair scientists for many of his books, including "Dinosaur in a Haystack'', "Bully for Brontosaurus'', and "Ever Since Darwin''.

He did his fieldwork at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, published his thesis in 1968 and moved on to become the world's leading populariser of paleontology and prehistoric history.

And along the way he became a wildly popular science writer.

Dr. Gould has gone on to lead world opinion on dinosaur extinction, the spread of species and the origins of life.

Copies of his 1981 classic "Mismeasure of Man'' had only to be dusted off to counter 1995's most controversial book "The Bell Curve'' in which the authors wrote of a link between race and intelligence.

His controversial evolutionary theory, "punctuated equilibrium'' was based partly on his work here in Bermuda.

By his side was Independent Sen. Walwyn Hughes who was then a young Department of Agriculture and Fisheries scientist who acted as guide and informant for the equally young Dr. Gould.

Dr. Hughes and Dr. Gould travelled about the Island, forming a friendship that has lasted throughout the decades.

Dr. Gould returned to Bermuda in the 1970s to find that except for fossil shells, there was little evidence of the snail that once covered the Island.

In his work, he gave detailed descriptions of the differences among the snails, paying attention to shell form, thickness, and colouring.

He thanked "a host of Bermudian children who curiously watched and sometimes aided while a stranger hammered at their road cuts'', especially the anonymous child that found a rare sub-species.

Dr. Gould found that poecilozonites can be divided into three sub-genera, 15 species and dozens of subspecies in a process called "adaptive radiation''.

Dr. Gould has written about the dangers of importing the cannibal snail Euglandina, in 1993's "Eight Little Piggies'' where he wrote about the similar disaster in the South Pacific Island of Moorea, where there was a similarly diverse type of snail.

He called Bermuda's Poecilozontes the "Darwin's Finch among molluscs'' and said it "radiated into a score of species in a great range of sizes and shapes''.

Of his research, Dr. Gould wrote that of the 15 known species in total, three poecilozonites were "thriving'' here when he first arrived in 1963.

"I don't think Euglandina has even dented Otala, but it devastated the native Poecilozonites,'' he wrote. "I used to find them by the thousands throughout the Island.

"When I returned in 1973... I could not find a single animal alive. Last year (1991) I relocated one species, the smallest and most cryptic, but the large P. bermudensis, major subject of my research, is probably extinct.'' Later he wrote: "Biological control should... be attempted only with the utmost caution. In my personal pantheon of animals to hate and fear, no creature ranks higher than Euglandina, the `killer' or `cannibal' snail of Florida.

"Euglandina eats other snails -- with utmost efficiency and voraciousness. It senses slime trails, locks onto them, and follows the path to a quarry then quickly devours.'' After months of trying, The Royal Gazette finally interviewed the always busy Dr. Gould last week.

"Those are well remembered times,'' he said warming to the change of pace in his busy schedule. "I have very warm memories of Bermuda. It is so wonderful.

I've been back several times.'' He first arrived in 1959 as a student turned lowly equipment handler on a Woods Hole Research Institute boat.

"I was a geology major,'' Dr. Gould said. "I had a look around and found all these wonderful fossil snails in all their variety. The geology of Bermuda had already been worked out by then and I thought these snails would become a pretty good Phd.

"Bermudians were very nice to me. They would let me snoop about their back yards. I don't think anyone told me no. I would go around on my rented Dowling's cycle all over the place.

"Blackwatch Pass was the best place to find the fossils. It was chock full of them!'' Modestly, he added: "Good men like David Wingate and Walwyn Hughes could tell you all about the Poecilozonites, they were in on it as well.'' He admitted his work here was a good launching board for his career, but he pointed out the story of the Poecilozonites was essentially complete with his thesis published.

The bulk of his academic work since then has been on the Bahamian species of land snail, Cerion, which he said would take him a lifetime to complete.

Dr. Hughes said of his friend: "He was young and up and coming and obviously a brilliant scientist, very unassuming and as we now know, a great writer.''