194 FUNGI AND HOW TO KNOW THEM 
Professor Puller thinks that slugs play no important part 
in spore-dispersal. “ Although it may be true that slugs 
help in the local dispersal of spores in a wood or field, and 
provide conditions for their germination, these animals, 
owing to their slow rate of movements, could scarcely act 
as agents in spreading fungus species from wood to wood 
when these are separated by considerable distances.” He 
remarks that herbivorous birds, toads, slugs, insects, worms, 
etc., must very frequently devour spores with their food, but 
he apparently attaches no importance to the fact that slugs, 
insects, and worms are the chief diet of many birds. The 
possibilities of very wide distribution by birds are evident 
from Mr. Robert Newstead’s note on the stomach-contents 
of a cuckoo, taken in Cheshire on April 27, 1903. The 
stomach was filled with a black pulverized mass of spinose 
hairs, mandibles, thoracic sclerites, etc., of a Lepidopterous 
larva, evidently all of the same species. The remains were 
unlike those of any British species, and it was considered 
highly probable that they were of tropical origin. 
