IO 
NATURE NOTES. 
to shrink from my new acquaintance. He reconnoitred the 
finger from side to side, and at length discovered a suitable 
place to commence his ascent. At the root of the nail he 
paused ; I felt a sharp prick repeated in the same spot once or 
twice. 1 then guessed what was about to happen, and stoop- 
ing as I was in a most irksome position, I awaited the issue. 
I did not disturb him at his feast till quite a small trickle of 
blood was running down the side of the nail. I then carried 
him into the house on a laurel leaf and put him into a glass 
tumbler. He measured more than four inches in length. He 
crawled to the edge of the glass and we fed him from a penknife 
with milk, which he sucked down with great relish through the 
small triangular opening of the lips, within which lay concealed 
the sharp teeth that had done the mischief. Having fed at our 
board we could not straightway deliver him to the executioner, 
in the shape of a gardener, so the next morning we restored him 
to his native wilds, far from the haunts of man, with the parting 
hope that his path and mine should not cross again. It was 
some days before the sore place in my finger quite healed, a 
small piece of flesh and skin having been bitten out. 
I related the occurrence to several scientific friends, who ex- 
pressed themselves ignorant of this leech-like propensity in 
the slug. I can find also no reference to it in Turton’s “ British 
Shells,” or in Woodward’s “ Mollusca.” Land-soles are all 
vegetable feeders, though they have been known to devour dead 
worms and injured individuals of their own species. There 
is a single exception — the carnivorous habits of the Testacelle, 
which pursues and feeds on live earth worms, are well known. 
This voracity for warm blood shown by cold-blooded animals 
is very curious, especially so when we consider how few indi- 
viduals can ever have a chance of indulging it. It can scarcely 
be called an acquired taste : it seems instinctive. Yet as Prof. 
Ryrner Jones points out in his admirable and comprehensive 
popular work ( “ A General Outline of the Animal Kingdom ” ), 
the blood gorged by the leech is not by any means suited to its 
nourishment, and often causes its death. 
The lingual teeth of Avion make a beautiful and interesting 
microscopic slide ; they are of flinty substance, serrated and 
tricuspid as in Limax. Avion empiricorum has 160 rows with ioi 
teeth in each. The shell is oval and concave, or represented by 
irregular calcareous granules. The breathing orifice is near the 
front of the mantle on the right side ; the tail ends in a mucous 
gland which secretes the glistening trail the animal leaves be- 
hind it. 
Some slugs climb trees and lower themselves to the ground 
by a mucous thread drawn from this gland. The eggs, which 
are from seventy to a hundred in number are laid in the ground 
between May and September: they hatch in from twenty-four 
to a hundred days, and the young attain maturity in less than 
