64 MY GARDEN 



And, finally, let us sweep away that sanguine nonsense 

 about slug-proof plants. Show me your slug-proof 

 specimens and suffer me to bring up a leash of my 

 big fellows striped like tigers and we shall see. I 

 will keep them on the chain without food for a week, 

 and then slip them at something you value. Zinc 

 alone stops them ; this metal is highly obnoxious to 

 slug or snail, and a collar of it affords the best pro- 

 tection to alpines that I have yet met with. 1 



Saxifraga rosularis, silene alpestris, and some clumps 

 of saxifraga apiculata thrive at the spot below my ixias, 

 while beneath them is another step sowed with grass 

 five feet long and a foot and a half deep. Here are tiny 

 daffodils : minimus, juncifolius, calathinus, concolor, 

 cyclamineus, nanus, and triandrus alba. Some do and 

 some do not. N. calathinus I cannot prevail upon to 



1 An ancient writer doth thus discourse upon the subject of snails. It 

 is a precious opinion and worthy to be recorded. " The snayle," says he, 

 "hath but 3 senses, that is the touch, the smell, and the tast ; he sees 

 not ; he hears not. The touch is principally in his homes ; the smell and 

 taste in his mouth, in which he hath a little black toung not bigger than a 

 hair, with which he frets herbes, bread, and other things." Sir Thomas 

 Browne, on the contrary, credits your snail with sight, and thus he tunes 

 the sonorous organ of his prose to this slimy subject. " That they have 

 two eyes is the common opinion ; but if they have two eyes, we may grant 

 them to have no less than four, that is two in the larger extensions above, 

 and two in the shorter and lesser horns below ; and this number may be 

 allowed in these inferior and ex-sanguineous animals, since we may 

 observe the articulate and latticed eyes in flies, and nine in some spiders : 

 and in the great phalangium spider of America, we plainly number eight." 

 Elsewhere he declares that, " by the help of exquisite glasses we discover 

 those black and atramentous spots or globules to be their eyes." Eyes or 

 no eyes, the snail's " little black toung " is a fact ; his rooted objection 

 to the metal zinc is also a fact ; and this last circumstance is more 

 important from the point of view of minute alpines and delicate bulbs than 

 any other. 



