KEW: THE FACULTY OF FOOD-FINDING IN CAREROT EE I5!I 
greater mental activity than can be reasonably looked for in the 
Gastropoda. We can well imagine, however, that, having once 
detected the presence of the flowers, the creatures would instinctively 
endeavour to reach them, and observers familiar with the use of 
slime-threads by slugs will understand that individuals happening to 
crawl along the rafters until immediately above the spikes would be 
likely, in reaching out towards them, to relinquish their hold 
and become: suspended upon threads which would be gradually 
lengthened until the spikes were reached. 
Some of the plants thus specially liable to be sought out and 
eaten are effectually protected, it is significant to note, by the 
presence of other plants or substances the attractive powers of 
which are still greater. This fact is well known to gardeners, etc., 
who commonly practise a system of ‘ counter-feeding.’ Thus, 
small heaps of buckwheat-meal were placed near them. Crops of 
young carrots in frames and rows of dahlias in the open, it is stated, 
escape when young and tender lettuce-plants are thrown down near : 
for when slugs can get lettuces ‘ they invariably leave everything else.” 
So great is the benefit derived in this way that it is even found 
worth while to plant lettuces amongst ‘choice things’ which are 
usually much attacked.2 When about to plant out a bed of dahlias, 
as a well-known gardening author states, it is advisable to plant the 
whole piece with lettuces first; and, he adds, ‘as long as the 
lettuce lasts the snails and slugs will not touch a dahlia.” A writer 
in the ‘Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ many years ago, stated that in a very 
bad slug season he once covered a fifteen-acre wheat field thickly 
damage would almost certainly have been done. As stated in 1846, 
many fields of oats, etc., were completely destroyed by slugs in that 
year and had to be ploughed down and re-sown with tares or barley.’ 
A farmer at Harmondsworth, in 1842, is said to have had cart-loads 
of turnip-leaves scattered over his wheat land, and forty women 
employed to shake the slugs from the leaves in the mornings took 
no less than twenty bushels of them upon forty-two acres in three 
weeks. 
s ts C. C., ‘ Garden,’ xxv. (1884), 
' Casdaneey Magazine,’ xvii. rank 35; and see also xxix. (1886), 297, and ‘Garden, vii, 
(3873) 464. 
* Shirley Hibberd, ‘The Amateur's Flower Garden,’ 1884, p. 285+ 
* J. Trimmer, ‘ Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ 1844, Pp. 44 
503-4- 
® ‘Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ 1842, p. 56, quoting the ‘ Merthyr Guardian.’ 
May 1803. 
