80 Natural History of Molluscous Animals* 



late as 1666, this belief had strengthened by its growth: for, 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of that year, travellers to 

 India are solicited to enquire, " whether those shell-fishes 

 that are in these parts plump and in season at the full moon, 

 and lean and out of season at the new, are found to have 

 contrary constitutions in the East Indies : " a nice question, 

 to which I do not find any answer was ever returned. To the 

 marine Zoophaga there are probably no set hours or seasons, 

 and I do not see why it should be otherwise with the Phyto- 

 phaga, although the latter certainly inhabit a shallower water, 

 and may consequently be somewhat influenced by the degree 

 of light. The littoral species appear to feed during the night, 

 as Mr. Guilding informs us the Chitonidae do on the shores 

 of the Caribbean Sea. {Zool. Journ., v. 30.) Snails and slugs 

 in general prefer to dine, like ourselves, late in the evening, 

 when the sun's fervour has abated, and the dew has begun 

 to fall ; but, most unlike ourselves, they may be found at 

 breakfast, their appetites not a whit blunted by their late 

 prandial repast, in the very early mornings of summer, before 

 the sun even has risen to drink up the evening's moisture. 

 But, in moist weather, they may be found feeding at all hours ; 

 and after a sultry dry term, no sooner does the rain com- 

 mence its fall, than they are astir, be the time when it may. 

 Lister is indeed rather too nicely discriminative here : he tells 

 us that the snails (Cochleae) feed at all times of the day, 

 especially of a rainy one; the black field slugs almost only at 

 sunset, but the cellar slugs not before midnight, [fixer. Anat. 

 de Cochleis, $c, p. 89.) 



[Zi v max variegatus, Sowerbyz, and other, probably all, 

 slugs, have very certainly a strong liking of animal matter. 

 L. variegatus I have known plentiful in two houses in the 

 London neighbourhood in which I have lived, about the 

 kitchen sink : it is, one would hence think, usual in London 

 houses. The places of its retreat are cavities between the 

 sink and wall, or the sink and pump, or upon the under sur- 

 face of the sink itself. At nightfall, the slugs sally forth to 

 pasture on whatever may be found about the sink, or parts 

 close by, suited to their taste : they will pick bones most per- 

 fectly, eat boiled potatoes, &c. One, which had been killed 

 by accident, was filled with fragments of cooked potatoes and 

 starch in a pulpy state : some of the latter had been left 

 in a basin near the sink. The slugs have always all retreated 

 by the morning. On going to the sink with candlelight at 

 night, the slugs are pretty objects in their almost transparent 



