The Land Slugs 



time required to reach maturity is about eighty days. Each 

 individual lays several hundred eggs in a year. This is the most 

 prolific of all the slugs, therefore the most difficult to deal with. 



This unwelcome immigrant may be recognised by its grooved 

 and tubercled back, which ranges from white to black, through 

 yellow and brown. Its plentiful slime is white and viscid. It 

 eats earthworms and insects beside its regular diet. This species 

 is about li inches long. It is native to Europe, but naturalised 

 in this country. 



These are the slugs sold in British towns on the prescription 

 of physicians, and thoroughly believed in by the country folk 

 as "good for consumption." They are swallowed alive, or first 

 boiled in milk. 



Pliny recommends "a plaister made of slugs with their 

 heads cut off " to be bound on the forehead as a cure for headache. 

 He thought slugs were young snails not yet old enough to have 

 secreted shells. 



Genus ARION, Fer. 



Shell wanting, or resolved into several granules; body slug- 

 like, narrow, furrowed ; mantle small, free in front and on sides, 

 orifice of lung sac near fore part, slime gland in the tail, secre- 

 tion viscid, transparent. 



A small genus native to the eastern hemisphere, but with 

 representatives naturalised in this country. 



The Large Black Slug (A. ater, Linn.) has no friendship 

 with gardeners, but a standing feud. By day and by night the 

 creature eats, exhibiting a voracity that is rarely equalled. Our 

 quarrel is based upon the fruit it steals, but its diet is remarkably 

 varied. In captivity a specimen consumed the following items: 

 five other slugs, a dead mussel, some insects, and a little toilet 

 soap. It accepted also various garden vegetables, dead mice, birds, 

 earthworms, bread, wild plants, including several mushrooms, 

 some poisonous, leaves of polypody fern, sea holly and butter- 

 cup. After a two-days' fast one scraped the news oif a portion 

 of the daily paper. Another fed eagerly on a handful of beach 

 sand. Slugs can go hungry for days at a time, but they must 

 have water, or they die. 



A full grown slug will reach five inches in length. The body 

 is covered with a shingling of papillae, but no furrows. In colour 



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