Slug

“ CHILDREN'S TALES FOR GROWN-UPS. IX. THE UNWRITTEN TREATY.
"Be careful," said the worm to the slug, "there is one of those nasty birds over there. What ugly things they are!"
"Not half so ugly as men. Ugh!" said the slug.
"Men are big, not ugly. They don't eat worms."
"But they cut them in two with spades."
"Only by accident. There is nothing so ugly as a bloated over-grown bird eating a slender delicate worm."
"Except," said the slug, "a monstrous man crushing a tender slug under his clumsy hoofs. Birds I can tolerate. They are not so big as men." ”

“ An ample stream once held its winding course among them, but becoming choked at the further end with weeds and fallen leaves, and branches broken by the wind, it spread into a marsh, tenanted alike by the slow, creeping blind-worm, and water-newt, the black slug, and frogs of portentous size. ”

“ When the slug is cold, the body of the slug may be solid and have a stringy or flaky appearance, and the face may be imperfect, some of the letters being poorly cast or blurred. The base of the slug usually will be good. ”

“ Then again, if the day be wet, the slug works by day as well as by night. It is the sun and drought that he shuns, and not the light. Therefore the only effectual way to destroy slugs is to sow lime, in dust, and not slaked. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, his slime is his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime at dusk; for then the slugs are sure to be out. Slugs come after a crop that has long afforded a great deal of shelter from the sun; such as peas and vetches. ”

“ I kill some things that other things may live. They cannot all have it their own way in my garden, and I must settle which side is to prevail. All the same, I do sometimes try to look at it from the slug's point of view. What does the slug think about it? Let us hope and believe that the slug does not think about it.
With what brutality, too, does the gardener fight against the prolific impulses of nature. The dead flowers must be picked off from the sweet peas; otherwise they give up work early. If you cut down the lupine spikes as soon as the beans have formed, you will get more spikes. ”

“ Thus the slug Limax gets its name from limus, “mud”; but a scientist, who ought to have known [Pg 12] better, when wanting a name for another kind of slug, transposed the initial letters and made Milax! Vitrina is a sensible and descriptive name, the Latin for glassy, given to a shell like thin glass; but the Greek Arion recalls either a certain musician or a certain swift steed, neither of whom naturally suggests a slug. ”

“ The gardener one day brought in a testacella, or shelled slug. It fed upon earth-worms and was quite unlike the ordinary black or grey slug, of which we have, alas! countless thousands preying upon all the green things of the earth. This shelled slug was yellow, and seemed able to elongate its body very differently to any other species. The shell was quite small, a simple dome-shaped plate upon the anterior part of the body. I kept it for some weeks on damp moss under a tumbler, but it was often able to escapep. ”

“ When it is alarmed it is only about half an inch long. Many slugs have shells. The horns upon their heads are weapons. Slugs travel very slowly. Once a slug had a race with a hare. The slug won. Snails are the same as slugs. ”

“ A good many different kinds of slugs are found in Great Britain. The largest of all is the great gray slug, which often grows to a length of more than six inches. Then the black slug is very common in many parts of the country. It is not always black, however, for one may often find examples which are brown, or yellow, or gray, or even white. The milky slug, which has a thick creamy slime, is plentiful everywhere. ”

“ The production of a mucus-thread, as a means of progression through the air, has long been known in the Land-Slugs, and has been observed in seven genera, representing Limacidæ, Arionidæ, and Philomycidæ.
The Spinning-Slug (Limax filans) of authors is a myth, the habit being general, extending possibly to all Slugs of the families named. The animals are occasionally seen descending from trees, fences, rafters in greenhouses, &c, and they are easily induced to descend from small exposed objects on which they may be placed. ”

“ Hitherto all efforts to turn the slug to profitable use have failed, and mankind have been content to destroy without utilising it. The snail, we know, makes a good and nourishing soup, and nothing but prejudice prevents it from becoming a valuable article of food. But the snail, living as it does in its shell, has but a soft skin, while the slug possesses a coat of extraordinary toughness, which would seem to be an obstacle in the way of its ever becoming useful for culinary purposes. ”

“ The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps. Do you see the good of cleaning up rubbish? The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which the slugs are supposed to be. How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. ”

“ The slugs, which commit their depredations in the night, creep under the leaves in the morning, and by turning up the leaves you come at the slugs, and crush them, or carry them away. But besides the immense daily labour attending this, the slug, in a field sowed with wheat, has a clod to creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf. ”

“ The slug, called Succinea, is not strictly aquatic, but lives in damp places, and may be seen in full activity far from rivers, in meadows, where the grass is wet with rain or dew; but shells of the genera Limnea, Planorbis, Paludina, Cyclas, and others, requiring to be constantly in the water, are extremely exceptional in the loess, occurring only at the bottom of the deposit, where it begins to alternate with ancient river-gravel, on which it usually reposes. ”

“ The animal is like a big black slug, and, in comparison with the size of the slug, the shell is very small. A slug the size of a man's fist would have a shell about an inch long. Most shell-hunters would pass by a Scutum abiguum, not thinking it had a shell embedded in its folds. The shell is found amongst rocks in sheltered places on ocean beaches. ”

“ The slug is as defenceless as the pigeon, and no greater share of courage is required for slug hunting than for pigeon shooting; but whereas the one amusement is a slaughter of innocents, the other is the destruction of ravening beasts, and stands therefore in a far higher category. The slug trusts neither to speed nor fierceness; we know from story how his cousin, the snail, when attacked, put to flight a troop of tailors, by the exhibition of his horns, or, as the scientific would tell us, of his eyes on their upreared stalks. But if the slug possesses eyes, he makes no show of them. ”

“ Many such shaws in a field give it an unsightly appearance, but beyond this there is no great harm done after all, for as the slug seldom begins its work until the plant is large and well forward, the tubers underground, though they may be of smaller size than their neighbours that have escaped the slug’s attentions, are yet sound and wholesome food enough either for man or beast. ”

“ And sometimes one may dig up a very curious slug—testacella—which feeds on earthworms, and follows them down to the very bottom of their burrows. When the weather is cold, this slug makes a kind of cocoon of earth and slime, and lies fast asleep inside it, often for many months at a time. ”

“ In the woods you see yellow ones with several black bands wound round them in regular order.”
“The creature we call the spiral snail—isn’t it a slug that finds an empty shell and lives in it?” asked Emile.
“No, my friend; a slug remains always a slug without becoming a snail; that is to say, it never has a shell. The snail, on the contrary, is born with a tiny shell that grows little by little as the snail grows. The empty shells you find in the country have had their inhabitants, which are now dead and turned to dust, only their houses remaining.” ”

“ But although, so far, the slug has failed to afford either profit or gratification to man, its existence cannot be termed a failure, for there can be no doubt that, although unprovided with visible eyes, feet, or other organs, the slug manages to enjoy itself vastly. ”

“ In greenhouses a slug will forage night after night—as gardeners know to their cost—over the same beat, and will always return to the same hiding-place. Limax flavus has been noticed crawling with great regularity to a sink from a hole near the water-pipe, and keeping to a well-marked circular track. ”

“ I now find the only plan to exterminate them is hand-picking in the morning when the dew is on the leaf; by doing so I have nearly got rid of them. I now find a small brown slug on the leaves, eating holes in them, this is evidently the offspring of the bug; I also pick them off, thus preventing the breeding for next year. My vines, from being mere bare poles, are now bringing forth buds and leaves, but of course no fruit this year. I should much wish to hear if any remedy has been found. I find the wild ones in the woods are also infested with the slug. ”

“ A thick, dirty, slimy worm, without head or tail, form or colour. A slug has more artistic beauty about him. Be it so. At home in the aquarium (where, alas! he will live but for a day or two, under the new irritation of light) he will make a very different figure. That is one of the rarest of British sea-animals, Peachia hastata (Pl. XII. Fig. 1) , which differs from most other British Actiniæ in this, that instead of having like them a walking disc, it has a free open lower end, with which (I know not how) it buries itself upright in the sand, with its mouth just above the surface. ”

“ We have observed that this particular slug, or a closely allied species, is also much given to feeding on the stem of the common fern or bracken, dealing with it just as it does with the potato shaw, though, to be sure, it finds the fern a rather harder nut to crack; for the brave bracken, with its firmer contexture of stem, refuses to bend its head to the ground, no matter the number or direction of the slug’s insidious tunnellings and perforations. ”

“ Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail. ”

“ The long shining line with which the creature marked its path is the slime which proceeds from its body, and with which it is enabled to glide smoothly over sand or gravel that would otherwise injure it. I have said more on this subject than I should otherwise have done, because I wish to point out to you that even a creature so humble and so despicable [Pg 398] as a slug, is as curiously and wonderfully made, and displays the power and wisdom of its Creator, as decidedly, as the noblest and most beautiful animal. ”

“ Note also that most slugs have many variations in colour and markings.
Testacella haliotidea.—This genus of slugs forms a link between the naked slugs with rudimentary shells within, and the snails which live within their shells. The name Testacella, or little shell, was given by Cuvier in 1800, because this slug has a small shell at the end of the tail. Haliotidea means having a shell in the form of the marine shell Haliotis, the meaning of which again is the ear-shaped seashell, often called “Venus’ Ear.” It is subterranean in habit, and lives on worms. ”

“ How does it come, though, that slugs and snails now live together in the self-same districts? Why, because they each live in their own way. Slugs belong by origin to very damp and marshy spots; but in the fierce competition of modern life they spread themselves over comparatively dry places, provided there is long grass to hide in, or stones under which to creep, or juicy herbs like lettuce, among whose leaves are nice moist nooks wherein to lurk during the heat of the day. ”

“ The position and soil it most seems to enjoy may be readily afforded in any garden, as we shall shortly see; but, so far as my experience goes, the slugs are its most persistent enemies. Especially when in flower do they make long journeys to reach it; they go over sand and ashes with impunity, and often the beautiful tufts of bloom are all grazed off in one night. ”

“ It is not an easy matter to study its feeding habits when it is at large, and our knowledge of its food preferences have been derived mainly from Slow-worms in captivity. It will take spiders, small earthworms, and small insects; but always shows a marked preference for the small greyish-white slug (Limax agrestis) that is so great a pest to the grower of tender vegetables. This slug the Slow-worm consumes in quantity. Dr. Gerald Leighton, in his book on the "British Lizards," says: "I can vouch for a meal that consisted of seventeen slugs, the Slow-worm being a large male sixteen inches long. ”

“ Slugs really do seem to like them, even better than one's favorite seedlings. Little heaps of bran also, and young lettuces. My slugs do not care for cabbage leaves, and they are very untidy. Put thick slices of turnip near your auriculas, favorite primroses and polyanthuses, and Christmas roses, and near anything tender and not well established, and overhaul them early in the morning. "You can't get up too early, if you have a garden," says Mr. Warner; and he adds: "Things appear to go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. ”