NOVEMBER 279 



it started. This species, it has been noted, conducts its 

 courtship suspended with the object of its affections in 

 mid-air. A great spotted slug (Limax maximus), which 

 is the largest of our British slugs, made its escape from 

 a box where it was confined and travelled along the 

 mantelpiece until it came to the edge. It then made 

 a survey of the position, and, perceiving that to drop to 

 the ground meant injury or death, proceeded to exude 

 slime, whereof all the kind have an almost inexhaustible 

 supply, which it worked with its foot into a slender rope, 

 whereby the animal let itself gradually down till it 

 alighted safely on the fender. 



Still more complex is the mental process implied in the 

 proceedings of certain slugs species not mentioned 

 observed by Mr. R. Warner. The flowers of orchids, as 

 cultivators know to their cost, have an irresistible attrac- 

 tion for these creatures ; wherefore it is customary to bind 

 cotton wool round the spikes as a protection. Mr. Warner 

 had some fine plants of Odontoglossum Alexandra, which 

 were not only wadded in the usual way, but stood in pots 

 surrounded by water. Baffled in direct approach to the 

 delicious fare, many slugs ascended the rafters of the 

 greenhouse, and let themselves down upon the blossoms 

 by means of slime-threads. Here we have an exhibition 

 of design as apparently intellectual as that of the ant-lion 

 lava, which digs a pitfall in the sand, and, when a wander- 

 ing insect comes to the edge of it, discharges a shower 

 of sand upon the victim to bring it within reach of its 

 powerful jaws. But, whereas the ant-lion is exercising 

 an art or an instinct inherited from immemorial ancestors, 

 greenhouses and orchids are novelties in the experience 

 of British slugs, which display an unexpected faculty of 



