Reports to various Correspondents. 57 
gas lime as soon as the bine is down, and in early spring give a 
dressing of salt. I do not know the effect of the lattei on hops, 
but Mr. Hall, of Rothamsted Experiment Station, would soon 
tell you. I do not remember hearing this subject referred to at any 
of our Conferences at Wye College : I doubt if it would affect the 
stock early in the year in any case. I am convinced that this great 
outbreak of slugs in recent years is due to the insane destruction of 
birds — I know in my own case this is the main cause. In hop 
gardens, why cannot we do what is done in fruit orchards, employ 
poultry — especially in this case ducks — -most ravenous slug killers ? 
Hot only in such cases are the pests destroyed, but we get some 
return in the end. We cannot well adopt such natural remedies in 
gardens or fields, but with fruit and hops, I think we too often neglect 
feeding a paying crop off the pests of another crop.” 
A General Account of Slugs and Snails injurious 
to Farm and Garden Produce. 
The following paper is mainly taken from my article on this 
subject in the “Zoologist” for June, 1895. Fresh notes have been 
added, however, to bring the subject up to date. Slugs and snails 
have been very harmful during 1903, not only to hops, as recorded 
in the preceding pages, but to all plants. 
Snails and slugs are great pests to the gardener, and every now 
and then a plague of one or the other makes its appearance and 
attacks our field crops, destroying wheat and, as recorded from Great 
Staughton this year by Mr. F. Powers, eating off crops of young 
cabbage. Both snails and slugs possess a head which bears 
tentacles, and also a pair of eyes which may be borne at the tip of 
these tentacles. The foot is flattened. Snails possess lips, but the 
organ they use for destroying plant-tissues is the curious swollen 
rasping tongue, the “radula,” the surface of which is covered by 
rows of variously arranged teeth. They breathe by means of the 
highly vascular inner walls of the mantle- cavity. Snails and 
slugs are hermaphrodite. The eggs are laid in batches in the 
ground and under stones. The injurious snails belong chiefly to 
the genus Helix. Almost every wood and hedge, field and garden 
yields some kind of Helix ; others are partial to the sands near 
the sea, water-courses, and damp places. Their habits are noc- 
turnal and crepuscular, and they are seldom seen crawling in the day- 
time, unless after heavy rains. This latter habit has given rise to 
