300 NETHER LOCHABER. 



lar-buidhe as our Highlanders term it, the work of a small grey 

 slug that attacks the main-stem shaw just at its point of junction 

 with the soil, and eating and tunnelling it through and through 

 until the leaves first assume a yellow and withered appearance, and 

 the whole shaw finally falls down paralysed, and practically useless 

 and inoperative as to its proper functions, though not actually 

 rotten or dead, as in the case of the " blight." Many such shaws 

 in a field give it an unsightly appearance, but beyond this there is 

 no great harm done after all, for as the slug seldom begins its work 

 until the plant is large and well forward, the tubers underground, 

 though they may be of smaller size than their neighbours that have 

 escaped the slug's attentions, are yet sound and wholesome food 

 enough either for man or beast. We have observed that this 

 particular slug, or a closely allied species, is also much given to 

 feeding on the stem of the common fern or bracken, dealing with 

 it just as it does with the potato shaw, though, to be sure, it finds 

 the fern a rather harder nut to crack ; for the brave bracken, with 

 its firmer contexture of stem, refuses to bend its head to the ground, 

 no matter the number or direction of the slug's insidious tunnellings 

 and perforations. If you glance at a fern clump as you ride along 

 the road or climb the mountain steep, the yellow, withered fronds 

 of an occasional plant, here and there painfully conspicuous amid 

 the rich, dark, emerald green of its healthy companions, tell you 

 where the grey slug and a nasty, slimy little wretch it is is 

 busy at its evil work, drinking up, like consumption among the 

 human race, the very heart's blood, so to speak, of the fairest and 

 finest plants it can find. "We have found in our own experience 

 that the best protection of the potato from its ravages is to give the 

 ground a sprinkling of lime just as the plants are appearing above 

 ground, about the end of April or beginning of May. For the 

 early varieties usually planted in our gardens, a sprinkling of soot 

 is less unsightly and equally efficacious with lime. 



