This section is from the book "A Dictionary Of Modern Gardening", by George William Johnson, David Landreth. Also available from Amazon: The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses.
Slugs are of many species, and the smaller are much more injurious to the gardener than those of a larger size, because they are much less discernible, and their ravages being more gradual, are not at once detected. They are effectually destroyed by either salt or lime; and to secure its contact with their bodies, it is best first to water the soil where they harbour with lime water, in the evening, when they are coming out to feed, sprinkling the surface also with dry lime; and at the end of a week, applying a surface dressing of salt, at the rate of five bushels per acre. If cabbage leaves are spread upon the surface of land infested by slugs, they will resort to their under sides, and thus they may be trapped; hut lime and salt are most efficacious. Lime-water may be poured over wall-trees infested with them, and they may be syringed with it as well as with water in which gas liquor has been mixed, about half a pint to a gallon-. If lime be sprinkled along the top, and at the base of the wall, renewing it weekly, the slugs cannot get to the trees.
 
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