October, ’23] 
BASINGER: A SNAIL POISON 
457 
must be dry enough so that it will scatter nicely when tossed out with the 
hand. The infested areas should first be sprinkled with the garden 
hose, where water is available, as this brings out the snails and keeps the 
mash moist and palatable. It is preferable to do this in the evening. 
The poison bait is then broadcast over the infested areas as in sowing 
grain. It is desirable to toss it lightly over plants so that particles of 
the poison bran will lodge on the foliage as well as on the ground. The 
application should be followed each evening for four or five days by a 
wetting with the garden hose unless the work is done during rainy 
weather. The poison is very stable and does not loose its efficiency even 
after being wet each evening for a week or more. We gathered some of 
the dried particles of poison bran from the ground after it had been wet 
every evening during six days and it proved fatal to snails that fed on it. 
This is a slow acting poison and the results from an application should 
not be judged until, two or three days later. 
In an experimental plot we secured a kill of 96% out of 6431 active 
Helix pisana in six days. The results during our practical applications 
were fully as satisfactory. In a treatment applied to a flower bed in¬ 
fested with Helix aspersa 86% of a total of 588 snails were dead from the 
poison at the end of three days. This percentage would have been much 
higher had the experiment been continued two or three days longer. The 
following is a copy of a letter from a man in charge of an estate of about ten 
acres at Pasadena, California, who used the poison bait for Helix aspersa 
according to the directions given herein and was kind enough to report 
the results. 
“Dear Sir: 
The day following your visit to our place at the above address I prepared and 
carefully broadcasted the preparation for the extermination of snails over the entire 
canyon and the flower gardens. This covered the areas where the snails were the 
most plentiful. We followed this work during the following week with very liberal 
spraying over the entire area each day as much as possible and I am glad to report 
that the result is very gratifying. In fact it is better than I had hoped for. During 
the past three days I have spent my entire time in cleaning out leaves and old plants 
through this part of our grounds and have found hundreds of snails and out of the 
many hundreds only two that were alive. One was in the vegetable garden back of 
the house where you found the large snail that you took with you as a specimen 
and the other on a branch of an oak tree. 
Very truly yours, 
A. H. Gregory 
1504 So. Marengo Ave., Pasadena, California. 
This poison bait is now being distributed in considerable quantities 
through the office of County Horticultural Commissioner R. R. McLean 
