Snails and slugs possess to a considerable extent the faculty of ‘homing,’ or returning to the same hiding-place day after day, after their night excursions in search of food. Mr. C. Ashford once marked with a dab of white paint seven _Helix aspersa_ found lurking under a broken flagstone; at 10 P.M. the same evening three had disappeared on the forage; the next morning all were ‘at home.’ The following night at 10 P.M. five were gone out, two being discovered with some difficulty ‘in a small jungle’ six feet away; the next morning six out of the seven were safely beneath the flagstone. According to the same authority, _Helix aspersa_ will find its way across a cinder-path (which it specially detests) to get to its favourite food, and will return by the same way to its old quarters, although it could easily have found new lodgings nearer the food-supply. A snail has been observed to occupy a hole in the brick wall of a kitchen-garden about four feet from the ground. Leaning against the wall, and immediately under the hole, was a piece of wood, the lower end of which rested in a bed of herbs. For months the snail employed this ladder between its food and its home, coming down as soon as it was dark, and retiring to rest during the day. In greenhouses a slug will forage night after night--as gardeners know to their cost--over the same beat, and will always return to the same hiding-place. _Limax flavus_ has been noticed crawling with great regularity to a sink from a hole near the water-pipe, and keeping to a well-marked circular track. In all probability the scent, either of the desired object of food, or of the creature’s own trail, plays a considerable part in keeping it to the same outward and homeward track, or at least in guiding it back to its hiding-place. Yet even scent is occasionally at fault, for on one occasion a _Limax flavus_ was accustomed to make nightly excursions to some basins of cream, which were kept in a cool cellar. When the basins were removed to a distant shelf, the creature was found the next morning ‘wandering disconsolately’ about in the place where the basins had formerly stood.[71] A remarkable case of the power of smell, combined with great perseverance on the part of a _Helix_, is recorded by Furtado.[72] He noticed a _Helix aspersa_ lodged between a column on a verandah and a flower-pot containing a young banana plant, and threw it away into a little court below, and six or seven yards distant. Next morning the snail was in precisely the same place on the flower-pot. Again he threw it away, to the same distance, and determined to notice what happened. Next morning at nine o’clock, the snail was resting on the rail of a staircase leading up to the verandah from the court; in the evening it started again, quickening its space as it advanced, eventually attacking the banana in precisely the same place where it had been gnawed before. For further instances of the power of smell in snails, see chap. vii.