128 
MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM. 
liking for the gills, and eat patches 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. Kiley for his 
opinion. Prof. Eiley replied that: “It is quite likely 
that the damage was done by some myriapod, possibly a 
Julus, 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 own 
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 
