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Extract from the Diary
A robin’s nest lies forlorn in the hedge. The frost is gilded by the early morning sunshine. The ice-plant glows brilliantly.
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Extract from the Diary
A robin’s nest lies forlorn in the hedge. The frost is gilded by the early morning sunshine. The ice-plant glows brilliantly.
As I pause to soak up a shaft of winter sunshine it occurs to me that I never see slugs in other people’s gardens. Perhaps slugs are only visible to the garden proprietor, I think, and then realise how misguided I am in my choice of words.
Proprietor: it seems a 19th century expression. Those of the New Age know certainly that no garden belongs to its human. It is possessed, ordered, devoured by the multitude of other creatures which inhabit it – slugs, snails, greenfly, lacewings, earwigs, centipedes, millipedes, green caterpillars, stripy caterpillars, handsome hairy caterpillars, spiders, bumble-bees, honey-bees, wasps, wagtails, tits, swallows, house martins, frogs – among others.
AND THE QUOTE OF THE DAY
These snails cease feeding when the first chills of Autumn are felt; and associating, in considerable numbers, on hillocks, the banks of ditches, or in thickets and hedges, set about their preparations for their winter retreat. They first expel the contents of their intestines, and them concealing themselves under moss, grass, or dead leaves, each forms, by means of its foot, and the viscid mucus which it secretes, a cavity large enough to contain its shell. The mode in which it effects this is remarkable: collecting a considerable quantity of the mucus on the sole of its foot, a portion of earth and dead leaves adheres to it, which it shakes off on one side; a second portion is again thus selected, and deposited, and so on till it has reared around itself a kind of wall of sufficient height to form a cavity that will contain its shell; by turning itself round it presses against the sides and renders them smooth and firm. The dome, or covering, is formed in the same way: earth is collected on the foot, which then is turned upwards, and throws it off by exuding fresh mucus; and this is repeated till a perfect roof is formed.
AND THE QUOTE OF THE DAY
These snails cease feeding when the first chills of Autumn are felt; and associating, in considerable numbers, on hillocks, the banks of ditches, or in thickets and hedges, set about their preparations for their winter retreat. They first expel the contents of their intestines, and them concealing themselves under moss, grass, or dead leaves, each forms, by means of its foot, and the viscid mucus which it secretes, a cavity large enough to contain its shell. The mode in which it effects this is remarkable: collecting a considerable quantity of the mucus on the sole of its foot, a portion of earth and dead leaves adheres to it, which it shakes off on one side; a second portion is again thus selected, and deposited, and so on till it has reared around itself a kind of wall of sufficient height to form a cavity that will contain its shell; by turning itself round it presses against the sides and renders them smooth and firm. The dome, or covering, is formed in the same way: earth is collected on the foot, which then is turned upwards, and throws it off by exuding fresh mucus; and this is repeated till a perfect roof is formed.
The Saturday Magazine, November 5, 1836
