62 MY GARDEN 



them a hundred and fifty ways." And yet they neither 

 tremble nor depart. I understand the value of soot 

 and bran and beer, lime and lime-water and orange- 

 peel ; I have applied slugicides in every variety that 

 the advertisements offer ; but the slugs persist. Mr. 

 Robinson has a good remedy. He says that if 

 limax agrestis be stabbed or cut through with a 

 sharp-pointed knife at the shield, the creature dies 

 immediately. This I know to be true; and I go 

 further, and believe that if he be divided anywhere, 

 he likewise dies ; but some gardeners question it, 

 and hold that to halve slugs is to double them that, 

 in fact, we ' increase by division,' according to the 

 accepted horticultural phrase. There is a great deal 

 of anger, doubt, and ignorance expended on the sub- 

 ject, and I have never yet heard a respectable theory 

 of slugs other than my own. This, of course, sounds 

 vain ; but I advance my opinion with the utmost 

 modesty and deference, make no scientific claims 

 whatever, and am quite prepared to hear the idea can- 

 not be sustained. I submit that during the earth's 

 infancy as a life-bearing planet, Nature created slugs 

 for her own purpose, and really found them both de- 

 sirable and necessary. Before the time of gardens 

 they probably had a part to play in the cosmic 

 machinery, and were very pleasant companions : they 

 flourished ; they ate ; and they were eaten, as we all 

 are. I believe there exist fossil slugs ; at any rate 

 the slug and the snail both can point to a profound 

 antiquity. But at last there came a time when Nature 

 began to feel the slug was played out. With the pro- 



