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things, and the wholesale destroyers of fruit and vegetable gardens. People are 

 too fond of destroying them wantonly. 



If the slugs be very numerous, and their work of destruction in gardens be 

 very severe, several plans may be adopted to lessen their numbers. One way 

 is to make use of a trap, for instance, a cabbage or a tmrnip leaf, after dusk. 

 Water the ground under the cabbage, this will attract the slugs, and by early 

 dawn they will have collected together ; then destroy them, and the cabbage leaf. 

 Another way would be to encourage the presence of small birds, especially 

 thrushes ; they consume a great many slugs as ordinary food. Also avoid edgings 

 for garden walks, such as box or daisies ; the slugs find them a very nice protection, 

 and being night-feeders much more than day-feeders (unless the moistiu-e by day 

 be very great), they harbour in their hiding-places which they could not do if the 

 borders of the walks were of tiles or slates. 



It will not be very difficult to show that snails and slugs should be un- 

 molested, as being really of immense benefit to society, so much so that, if they 

 were extinct without the creation of some other beings to supply their place, 

 fevers and pestilences would be much more frequent than they are now. They 

 select {at least all the larger land ones do) damp places as the feeding grounds ; 

 they prefer dense coppices, walls and trees, where ivy and other parasitical plants 

 grow ; sometimes (and this is more especially the case with the smaller kinds) 

 they are to be found under stones, decaying pieces of timber, at the roots of small 

 shrubs, in the bulbs of tulips, &c. ; indeed, as a rule, they choose decidedly moist 

 spots, and why? Is the reason to destroy animal life wantonly? Certainly not. 

 The object is to eat — not carrion, which is the food of certain birds, but just what 

 in vegetable life corresponds to it — garbage of the lowest kind, which would soon 

 render our woods and gardens anything but as pleasant as they are. This will 

 account for the fact that in wet weather and gloomy autumnal days, snails are so 

 much more easily found than before ; they sally forth tempted by moisture, to 

 find fresh food and residence. Of course no pretence is made to deny the fact 

 that snails frequently do consume food which is not in a state of decomposition, 

 but they do so principally in the spring and summer months of the year when the 

 air is not favourable to decomposition ; and then the very food they select is 

 succulent, such as youthful sweet peas, lupins, &c., a fact which helps to prove 

 what was to be shown, that snails and slugs are of service to us instead of being 

 an injury. 



There is another popular mistake with regard to snails, which is that they 

 can with ease leave their own shell and crawl into another adapted to them. 

 They no more can do so than any of us can get out of our own skin, find another 

 about our size, and get into it. There is a very strong ligament which secures 

 the animal to the shell, as may be proved by a large snail which has just been 

 killed ; considerable force will be necessary to detach it from its covering. The 

 error, no doubt, has arisen from a supposed difficulty with regard to growth, how, 

 in short, a small snail with a small skin could become a large one — moreover the 

 mistake may have originated also from the idea that because caterpillars, spiders, 

 lobsters, prawns, &c., cast their skins, therefore snails do so ; but the analogy does 



