338 TIME OF FEEDING. 



should be otherwise with the Phytophaga, although the 

 latter certainly inhabit a shallow^er water, and may conse- 

 quently be somewhat influenced by the degree of light. 

 The littoral species appear to feed during the night, as Mr. 

 Guilding informs us the Chitonidge do on the shores of the 

 Caribbean Sea.* Many Nudibranches are only active when 

 the night has lent them its genial shade, and perhaps lured 

 their prey to a fatal sleep. 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. In moist 

 weather, they may be found feeding at all hours ; and after 

 a sultry dry term, no sooner does the rain connnence 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, espe- 

 cially of a rainy one 5 the black field-slugs almost only at 

 sunset, but the cellar-slugs not before midnight.f 



* Zool. Jouin. V. 30. 



t Exer. Anat. de Cochleis, p. 89. 



