36 HOMING AND FINDING FOOD chap. 



the creature's own trail, plays a considerable part in keeping it to 

 the same outward and homeward track, or at least in guiding it 

 back to its hiding-place. Yet even scent is occasionally at fault, 

 for on one occasion a Limax Jlavus was accustomed to make 

 nightly excursions to some basins of cream, which were kept in 

 a cool cellar. When the basins were removed to a distant shelf, 

 the creature was found the next morning ' wandering disconso- 

 lately ' about in the place where the basins had formerly stood. ^ 



A remarkable case of the power of smell, combined with great 

 perseverance on the part of a Helix, is recorded by Furtado.^ 

 He noticed a Helix aspersa lodged between a column on a 

 verandah and a flower-pot containing a young banana plant, and 

 threw it away into a little court below, and six or seven yards 

 distant. Next morning the snail was in precisely the same place 

 on the flower-pot. Again he threw it away, to the same dis- 

 tance, and determined to notice what happened. Next morning 

 at nine o'clock, the snail was resting on the rail of a staircase 

 leading up to the verandah from the court ; in the evening it 

 started again, quickening its space as it advanced, eventually 

 attacking the banana in precisely the same place where it had 

 been gnawed before. 



For further instances of the power of smell in snails, see 

 chap. vii. 



Slugs have been known to make their way into bee-hives, 

 presumably for the sake of the honey .^ '- Sugaring ' the trees at 

 night for moths will often attract a surprising concourse of slugs. 

 Sometimes a particular plant in a greenhouse will become the 

 object of the slugs' persistent attacks, and they will neglect every 

 other food in order to obtain it. Farfugium grande is one of 

 these favourite foods, " the young leaves and shoots being always 

 eaten in preference to all other plants growing in the houses ; 

 where no Farfugiums were kept the slugs nibbled indiscrimi- 

 nately at many kinds." ^ The flowers of orchidaceous plants 

 exercise a special attraction over slugs, which appear to have 

 some means of discovering when the plants are in bloom. " I 

 have often observed," says Mr. T. Baines, "that a slug will travel 

 over the surface of a pot in which is growing a Dendrohium 



1 W. A. Gain, quoted by H. W. Kew in Naturalist, 1890, p. 307, an article 

 to which I am much indebted. - Aim. Mag. Nat. Hist. (5) xvi. p. 519. 



3 Science Gossip, 1882, pp. 237, 262. 

 * H. W. Kew, Naturalist, 1893, p. 149, another most valuable article. 



