The Slimy Leech or Slug.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1735, 18 September 1885, Page 3

The Slimy Leech or Slug.

The following letter appears in a Wanganui paper :

Sir : The present is, I think (with your permission) a fitting time to call attention to the above pests of orchards and thorn hedges. It is possible the following remarks may be snpfii lliious to many practical fruit growers, but interesting to amateurs and others. At the full of last year I watched the movements of slugs. I found one morning (after they had completed the dosstruclion of leaves on a cherry tree) they were all, simultaneously, crawling down the trunk towards the ground. I cleared round the tree from grass, &c., and after a few weeks, with a hoe, took off about an inch in thickness of the soil round the stem when I saw thev had buried themselves making the ground quite honey-combed. In each cavity was a small yellow chrysallis, about the size and color ot a grain of wheat. They were all in a circle of about a foot from the stem ami on examining the ground under the thorn hedge, found the same indications extending a foot on each side trom the stems. It seems to me that it would be easy work to get rid ol the pest, if some of our practical gardeners could recommend a liquid to be used from, say, a water-can, that would destroy the larva- without in. .lining the roots of the trees. Surely it would be lav better it the cure can be effected now, than to wait until the moth or tly is developed (each one to lay innumerable eggs upon the young leaves), than to wait until the eggs are hatched, and then endeavor to kill the leech when on the trees and hedges, 1 hope to see some remarks from those more experienced than myself.