128 MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GKOW THEM. 



liking for the gills, and eat patchei; out of them here 

 and there. 



"Bullet" or "Shot" Holes.— My attention was 

 first called to these by Mr. A. H. Withington, of New 

 Jersey. They are little holes cut clear through the 

 mushroom caps, as if perforated by a buckshot, and are 

 evidently the work of some insect. He had, before then, 

 submitted some of these perforated mushrooms to Prof. 

 S. Lockwood, who sent them to Prof. C. V. Riley for his 

 opinion. Prof. Eiley replied that : " It is quite likely 

 that the damage was done by some myriapod, possibly a 

 Jul us, or some of its allies. Only observation on the 

 spot will determine this point." As I never had any 

 trouble with myriapods attacking mushrooms and had 

 seen nothing of this "bullet hole" work in our offn 

 beds I was much interested in the question and deter- 

 mined to look out for it, so I marked off a part of a bed 

 and left that uncared for. I soon found out the trouble. 

 These holes are the work of slugs which I have found 

 and watched in the act of eating out the holes. To find 

 the slugs at work, one has to take his lantern and go out 

 and look for them at night. And to find out about 

 plant parasites — be they fungus, or insect — one has 

 to let them alone and watch them. Had we kept up 

 our unsparing hunt for slugs, probably we should not 

 yet have known what caused these "bullet holes," for 

 no slug would have been left alive long enough to eat a 

 hole through a mushroom cap. 



Slugs must be caught and killed. We can find them 

 at night by hunting for them by lamp-light ; their slimy 

 track glistens and reveals their presence. A few small 

 bits of slate or half rotten boards with a pinch of bran 

 on them laid here and there about the beds are handy 

 traps ; the slugs gather to eat the bran, hide beneath 

 the rotten wood, and can then be caught and killed. 

 Fresh lettuce leaves make a capital trap, but lettuces in 



