SNAILS GALORE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3023, 21 October 1908, Page 4

SNAILS GALORE.

In the gloaming and later on little lights flash mysteriously on the hillsides of Wellington, says the "Post." They are the illuminations of exasperated amateur gardeners, with a candle or a lantern in one hand and a bludgedn in the other, distributing death far and wide among the shellback snails and marshy slugs that prey upon the patrician sweet-pea and the plebeian cabba.re, with equal zest. Various scarifiers, such as lime, soot, and tobacco dust, are recommended by the sympathetic, but many believe that the club is a more trusty friend. From various parts of New Zealand comes news that the slug nuisance this year is exceptionally severe. Wanganui sighs that the evil is "much more pronounced than usual," and pitiful laments are poured out in Christchurch and Dunedin. A visitor from Christchurch states that slugslaughtering competitions are in full swing there; when lie left for the North on Friday the record was held by a family which ended the careers of fifteen hundred slimy reptiles in one night. Citizens of Qunedin, ap parently, .are similarly trying to eclipse one another's tallies for the assassination of garden pests. One* lady, who has nerved herself to the task of dealing sudden death to the tormentors of plants, has gleefully counted the slain, and the total is reported to be over four thousand slugs.