The Land Slugs - Family Limacidae
THE LAND SLUGS - FAMILY LIMACIDAE. Shell present or absent, internal or external, respiratory cavity under mantle; radula and jaw well developed. Chiefly herbivorous mollusks, creeping about in woods and gardens, after rains, at dusk, or while the dew is on the ground. Some suspend themselves by glutinous threads from twigs or leaves.
Genus LIMAX, Linn.
Shell rudimentary, oblong, flattened, thin, behind the head, and buried under mantle; body long, flexible, keeled, with eyes on tips of upper pair of tentacles; jaw smooth, arched and beaked. Mantle free in front, with orifice of long sac near the right posterior margin.
Nocturnal mollusks with keen smell, sight and hearing, which like damp places and lay their eggs underground. Toads and frogs eat them.
The Great Gray Slug (L. maximus, Linn.) is five or six inches long when it stretches itself out at full length to rest after a toilsome journey after food. The slimy trail is an exudation of mucus, from a gland. The rounded body is ashen or pale brown, alternately striped and dotted.
M. Moquin-Tandon noticed one rainy day in the botanical gardens at Toulouse, two Limax maximus approaching, a rotten apple from different directions. He changed the position of the apple several times, placing it at a distance to be sure i they could not see it, but they always hit it off correctly, after raising their heads and moving their long tentacles in every direction. It then occured to him to hold the apple in the air, some centimetres above the head of the Limax. They perceived where it was and raised their heads and lengthened their necks, endeavouring to find some solid body on which to climb to their food.—Cooke.
The senses of smell and sight are lost in slugs from which the tentacles are cut.
282 The Land Slugs The gardener who kills this slug does himself and the mollusk an injustice. It is known to eat raw meat, live snails and slugs not excepted. It invades dairies to sip the cream, of which it is desperately_ fond. It eagerly eats flour and meal. It climbs into the kitchen garbage can, and culls such fragments as bread and butter, meat scraps, fat and cheese. The red binding of
certain books was chewed off by night, in one instance. The only food it will not touch is the green substance of growing plants. Hence it is preeminently the gardener's friend. It is not surprising to learn that the introduction of this species into America came through greenhouses to which they were brought by gardeners trained in the old countries. It is found in the neighbourhood of large cities in the east and on the Pacific coast.
L.
campestris, Binney, is a western slug closely related to the preCeding species. Its body is almost transparent, one coloured, amber to black, cylindrical, one inch long, with a scant supply of watery mucus.
New England to California.
L.
montanus, Eng., is a stout, bluish slug an inch long, found in the highlands of Colorado and Montana.
The Yellow Slug (L. flavus, Linn.) has a meddlesome habit of poking its nose into meal and flour bags and bins, hunting "broken wittles" in garbage cans, and nibbling the tender leaves of growing vegetables.
This is easily the' most beautiful of slugs. Its keeled back is yellowish brown with oval white spots on the body and round ones on the mantle. The tentacles and sole of the foot are white, the head and eye stalks are semi-transparent and bluish. Length, 3 inches.
Europe. Introduced into eastern cities of the United States.
The Field Slug (L. agrestis, Linn.) is the pest of gardens and greenhouses, coming out at night to devour tender seedlings, succulent vegetables and ripening fruits, even damaging field crops, such as peas, clover and oats.
Near our eastern seaboard cities this slug is common in cellars and under decaying boards about barnyards. Many congregate in one place, from which they rapidly scatter when disturbed. They hang head downward by mucous threads from plants and fence rails, especially in damp weather. The 283 The Land Slugs time required to reach maturity is about eighty days. Each individual lays several hundred eggs in a year. This is the most prolific of all the slugs, therefore the most difficult to deal with.