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THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



We will place our observations in numbered order under one another, and the 

 anticipated results would bp some such as the following : — 



1. Body fusiform (i.e. spindle-shaped) being pointed at both ends, and 



broad in the middle. 



2. Body whitish or yellowish, marked, or tessellated with white, brown, 



and brown- black. 



3. Mantle one-lobed and not bi-lobed as in Amalia gagatis and A. mat' 



ginata, marked with wrinkles running around concentrically. 



4. Head, neck, and tentacles slate-coloured. 



5. Body somewhat keeled, or carinated on its dorsal part towards the tail. 



6. Foot white and bordered externally with yellow. 



7. Slime yellow, sticky in quality, and large in quantity. 



8. Shell (the mantle will have to be lifted up to see this) quadrangular, 



thin, with a membraneous margin, and with the nucleus projecting 



a little over one end. 

 Now if you will take notice of all these features when you get a cellar-slug, 

 you will never miss telling, when you come to the examination of many slugs, 

 whether this or that one is Limax Jlavus or not, no matter how much variation 

 it may have undergone. In the majority of text books, flams is put down as 

 being universally distributed throughout the length and breadth of this 

 country, but this is evidently wrong, for in many lists which I have examined 

 there are two fatal words against it — " no record " ! It is local, but for all 

 that, if I may be excused the term — it is generally local. In America it has 

 been introduced, and occurs near Portland, Maine, while in Australia a form 

 has been described by a German observer named Lehmann, as Limax Beck- 

 worthianus, which, no doubt, is identical with Limax flavus. One archaic 

 record of this slug tells that it has the faculty of spinning threads, and hang- 

 ing down from branches of trees by them, somewhat after the manner of a 

 looper caterpillar. Three varieties have been described as inhabiting these 

 islands. One of them, which is greenish with indistinct spots (v. virescens) 

 has also been found in France and Italy. The other two seem, so far as the 

 records have been made up to the present, to be specially localised in this 

 country. These were described by Mr. Denison Roebuck, of Leeds, and are 

 called vars. grisea and siiffnsa : — the former having the markings of the type 

 but the ground colour grey instead of yellow, and the latter having its body 

 coloured with grey all over, without markings or spots at all. 



Limax Agrestis. — Who does not know this slug by its outward form 

 and colour, if not by its specific name. It is the slug of the cabbages, and 

 of the produce of our fields and gardens. Destroy it as fast as our gardeners 

 can its numbers do not seem to be on the decrease. Bouchard-Chautereaux — 



