SLUGS AS MYCOPHAGISTS 227 



Thus the spores of the fungi are disseminated through the agency 

 of insects. 



The smell from the cap of an expanded Phallus impudicus 

 attracts not only flies during the day but also slugs during the 

 night. Early in the morning I have several times found an 

 expanded fruit-body with a stipe which had been half-eaten by 

 slugs during the previous night (cf. Fig. 81), the slime left upon the 

 fungus and the nature of the damage affording a clear indication 

 of the identity of the marauders ; and, in the twilight of the evening, 

 I have sometimes found a slug, Limax maximus, actually upon a 

 Phallus engaged in feeding. 



Experiment I. At my father's house at Birmingham, England, 

 there is a smooth, well-compressed, gravel carriage-way which is 

 oval in form, 40 feet wide and 60 feet long (Fig. 82). On a border, 

 at the edge of the gravelled area, one evening in August as darkness 

 was setting in, I found an expanded Phallus upon which a slug, 

 Limax maximus, was feeding. I removed the slug and set the 

 fungus upon the gravel at a distance of 10 feet from the edge of 

 the border. The next morning I found that a slug had visited the 

 fungus upon the gravel, and the slime-track revealed that the slug 

 had come from the border where I had first found the fungus with 

 a slug feeding upon it. The track was very direct from the border 

 to the fungus. It therefore appeared that the Phallus had attracted 

 the slug chemotactically for a distance of at least 10 feet (Fig. 82, 

 no. I). 



Experiment II. Shortly after making the above experiment, 

 on August 28, 1920, I visited Sutton Park, Warwickshire, and there 

 procured nine large Phallus balls from under a Holly bush. The 

 balls were full-grown, but still quite odourless ; and their stipes 

 were beginning to elongate, for I could feel them in some of the balls 

 pressing upwards against the top of the peridium. I took the 

 balls home to my father's garden, planted them in damp soil in 

 pots, and set the pots in the green-house. Two days afterwards, 

 one of the balls opened and a tall stipe covered with a strongly 

 odorous dark-green cap emerged. In the evening I set the expanded 

 Phallus in the middle of the gravelled area. Next morning I found 

 that the fungus had been visited by a slug which, as indicated by 



