H ouse and Garden 
plants from America. A gentler spirit might 
have spared such a navigator among slugs ; 
but I killed him. You see there is in my 
garden a rock-border forty-five yards long ; 
and 1 have planted it with more than a 
thousand plants ; and the thing is common 
knowledge in slug circles for miles. At the 
fall of night Helix invites Limax to sup 
there; and I pay the bill every time. There¬ 
fore, in the matter of slugs, you will find me 
adamant. After all, the natural habitat of a 
slug is a mere matter of sentiment, and that 
Philadelphian may have been a notorious 
scoundrel they purposely captured and de¬ 
ported. A poet has said the last word about 
the slug: Longfellow of all people. 
“ The son of mystery ; 
And since God suffers him to be, 
He, too, is God’s minister, 
And labors for some good 
Bv us not understood ! ’ ’ 
It may be so. I say nothing, but do what 
I believe to be right. Mr. Robinson in his 
classic, “ The English Garden,” lays it down 
that if your slug “be stabbed or cut through 
with a sharp-pointed knife at the shield, the 
creature dies immediately.” This is prob¬ 
ably true. He ought to do so, and we 
might then say of him that he was neither 
lovely nor pleasant in his life, and in his 
death he was divided; but for my part I 
suspect that Devon slugs do not always per¬ 
ish when treated in this way. My gardener’s 
theory is that they join again and proceed 
with their business of destruction as though 
nothing had happened; while I, on the other 
hand, maintain that each half develops into a 
new slug, and that, as we say of some plants, 
they are increased by division. I have read 
lists of slug-proof things and smiled. Let me 
bring up a leash of my giant veterans. They 
are striped yellow and black, like tigers. I 
will keep them hungry for a day or two, then 
slip them at twilight among your slug-proof 
plants, and you’ll see all about it in the 
morning. As a matter of scientific fact, the 
naval oak, the mountain pine and the arau¬ 
caria alone escape. 
Another grand test of the true gardener is 
his attitude towards butterflies. When a 
man beams on a butterfly and invites you to 
watch it opening and shutting its glorious 
wings in the heart of some good plant, be 
sure he is a duffer. The only exception may 
be granted in the case of a tyro who has yet 
to learn the inner truth about butterflies and 
their marvelous maternal foresight. If you 
are an entomologist, well and good. I do 
not criticise. We must all have our simple 
pleasures, and the more butterflies you catch 
and pin into boxes the better I shall like 
you. Come to my garden and welcome. 
There will always be a glass of sherry and a 
biscuit for you after your sport is over. But 
if you are a gardener, then don’t bother 
about their gorgeous wings, but kill everyone 
of them that you can catch, or drive them 
next door. When 1 say this to kind souls, 
they think it cruel and tell me that the but¬ 
terflies are only sipping nectar. 'They may 
be. They must live, like their betters, and 
it they merely sipped nectar, they might all 
come, and 1 would even plant special butter¬ 
fly flowers for them, as some rash spirit now 
and then advises in the gardening journals. 
But, mark me, it is not what a butterfly 
takes ; it is what she leaves that 1 object to. 
The females of the diurnal lepidoptera lay 
eggs in astounding numbers, and, remem¬ 
bering exactly what they liked when they 
were themselves caterpillars,they choose those 
particular plants for their nurseries. A but¬ 
terfly’s taste is invariably expensive. They 
always select a specimen plant, and they 
arrange that their eggs shall hatch out just 
before it flowers. Buds and infant caterpillars 
bloom together, and the result is that a plant 
you paid good money for will suddenly turn 
into a tattered green rag at the most interest¬ 
ing and critical period of its career. Then 
you lose self-control and a family of jolly 
young caterpillars comes to a bad end. How 
much better that it should have had no be¬ 
ginning. I remember a glorious Romneya 
Coulteri just bursting into blossom. Full fifty 
delicious buttons trembled above the gray- 
green foliage, and presently they opened, and 
the great crimped petals glittered, and the 
golden beads at their hearts shone in the sun, 
while a delicious odor of primroses made 
that spot good to breathe in. All was joy 
and gladness. Congratulations were show¬ 
ered upon me. But then began the telltale 
tatters. By day the enemy escaped me; but 
when darkness returned I had him. Two 
and twenty lusty brown hooligans did I bring 
