SNAILS AND SLUGS.

THE shell-less snails called slugs are in motion all the winter in mild weather, and commit great depredations on garden plants, and much injure the green wheat, the loss of which is imputed to earthworms; while the shelled snail, the Epέonos, does not come forth at all till about April 10th, and not only lays itself up pretty early in autumn, in places secure from frost, but also throws out round the mouth of its shell a thick operculum formed from its own saliva; so that it is perfectly secured, and corked up, as it were, from all inclemencies. The cause why the slugs are able to endure the cold so much better than shell snails is, that their bodies are covered with slime as whales are with blubber.

Snails pair about Midsummer; and soon after deposit their eggs in the mould by running their heads and bodies underground. Hence the way to be rid of them is to kill as many as possible before they begin to breed.

Large, gray, shell-less cellar snails lay themselves up about the same time with those that live abroad; hence it is plain that a defect of warmth is not the only cause that influences their retreat.

SNAKES' SLOUGH.

"There the snake throws her enamell'd skin."

SHAKSPEARE, "Mids. Night's Dream." Act ii. sc. 1. ABOUT the middle of this month (September) we found in & field near a hedge the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have been newly cast. From circumstances it appeared as if turned wrong side outward, and as drawn off backward, like a stocking or woman's glove. Not only the whole skin, but scales from the very eyes, are peeled off, and appear in the head of the slough like a pair of spectacles. The reptile, at the time of changing his coat, had entangled himself intricately in the grass and weeds, so that the friction of the stalks and blades might promote this curious shifting of his exuviæ.

It would be a most entertaining sight could a person be an eye-witness to such a feat, and see the snake in the act of changing his garment. As the convexity of the scales of the eyes in the slough is now inward, that circumstance alone is a proof that the skin has been turned: not to mention that now the present inside is much darker than the outer. If you look through the scales of the snake's eyes from the concave side, viz. as the reptile used them, they lessen objects much. Thus it appears from what has been said, that snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs, and quit the tail part last, just as eels are skinned by a cook maid. While the scales of the eyes are growing loose, and a new skin is forming, the creature, in appearance, must be blind, and feel itself in an awkward uneasy situation.1

OBSERVATIONS ON VEGETABLES.

TREES, ORDER OF LOSING THEIR LEAVES.

NE of the first trees that becomes naked is the walnut: the mulberry, the ash, especially if it bears many keys, and the horse-chestnut, come next. All lopped trees, while their heads are young, carry their leaves a long while. Apple-trees and peaches remain green till very late, often till the end of November; young beeches never cast their leaves till spring, till the new leaves sprout

1 I have seen many sloughs or skins of snakes entire, after they have cast them off; and once in particular I remember to have found one of these sloughs so intricately interwoven amongst some brakes that it was with difficulty removed without being broken; this undoubtedly was done by the creature to assist in getting rid of its incumbrance.

I have great reason to suppose that the eft or common lizard also casts its skin or slough, but not entire like the snake; for on the 30th of March, 1777, I saw one with something ragged hanging to it, which appeared to be part of its old skin.-MARKWICK.

and push them off: in the autumn the beechen leaves turn of a deep chestnut colour. Tall beeches cast their leaves about the end of October.

SIZE AND GROWTH.

MR. MARSHAM, of Stratton, near Norwich, informs me by letter thus: "I became a planter early; so that an oak which I planted in 1720 is become now, at one foot from the earth, twelve feet six inches in circumference, and at fourteen feet (the half of the timber length) is eight feet two inches. So if the bark was to be measured as timber, the tree gives one hundred and sixteen and a half feet, buyer's measure. Perhaps you never heard of a larger oak while the planter was living. I flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the roots to extend, and by spreading sawdust, &c., as related in the 'Philosophical Transactions.' I wish I had begun with beeches, (my favourite trees as well as yours), I might then have seen very large trees of my own raising. But I did not begin with beech till 1741, and then by seed; so that my largest is now, at five feet from the ground, six feet three inches in girth, and with its head spreads a circle of twenty yards diameter. This tree was also dug round, washed, &c." Stratton, 24 July, 1790.1

The circumference of trees planted by myself, at one foot from the ground (1790).

Feet. Inches.

The great oak in the Holt, which is deemed by Mr.

1 It was at the hospitable seat of his " very worthy and ingenious friend, Robert Marsham," that Stillingfleet prepared his Flora for 1755," which has been already referred to.

Calendar of See p. 44.-ED.

Marsham to be the biggest in this island, at seven feet from the ground, measures in circumference thirty-four feet. It has in old times lost several of its boughs, and is tending to decay. Mr. Marsham computes, that at four

teen feet length this oak contains one thousand feet of timber.1

It has been the received opinion that trees grow in

1 Mr. Bennett, in a note to this passage, says :-" There are in the Holt two great oaks; one known as the Grindstone, and the other as the Buck's Horn. The former, I apprehend, is the one measured by Mr. Marsham. At about five feet from the ground its circumference is fully thirty-six feet. It is now a ruin merely, and destitute altogether of life: a massive ruin, however, which will resist, through generations yet to come, the utmost force of the elements."-ED.

height only by their annual upper shoot. But my neighbour over the way, whose occupation confines him to one spot, assures me that trees are expanded and raised in the lower parts also. The reason that he gives is this: the point of one of my firs began for the first time to peer over an opposite roof at the beginning of summer; but before the growing season was over, the whole shoot of the year, and three or four joints of the body beside, became visible to him as he sits on his form in his shop. According to this supposition, a tree may advance in height considerably, though the summer shoot should be destroyed every year.

FLOWING OF SAP.

Ir the bough of a vine is cut late in the spring, just before the shoots push out, it will bleed considerably; but after the leaf is out, any part may be taken off without the least inconvenience. So oaks may be barked while the leaf is budding; but as soon as they are expanded, the bark will no longer part from the wood, because the sap that lubricates the bark and makes it part, is evaporated off through the leaves.

RENOVATION OF LEAVES.

WHEN oaks are quite stripped of their leaves by chafers, they are clothed again soon after Midsummer with a beautiful foliage; but beeches, horse-chestnuts, and maples, once defaced by those insects, never recover their beauty again for the whole season.

ASH-TREES.

MANY ash-trees bear loads of keys every year, others never seem to bear any at all. The prolific ones are naked of leaves and unsightly; those that are sterile abound in foliage, and carry their verdure a long while, and are pleasing objects.

BEECH.

BEECHES love to grow in crowded situations, and will insinuate themselves through the thickest covert, so as to