JaPs' Giant Snails

Now A Maior Pacific Pest

TJ NIT ED States authorities appear to be keeping a wary eye on the giant snail, lest it become an un welcome migrant. The San Francisco “Chronicle” recently printed the following article. It might also have added that the luscious creatures are now well established in New Guinea.

So far none have been reported in Australia, although their introduction, through Island ships or planes, would be fatally simple.

Perhaps the Australian authorities are keeping a strict watch for the pests, hut if so, it is a 100 per cent, silent service and the general public has no idea of the danger that exists.

IF the giant African snail—half a foot, sometimes a foot long—should get go ing in this State it could wreck California as it has wrecked some of the Pacific isles. It is a voracious destroyer of green stuff. However, the California Academy of Sciences says it has not been able to verify the recent report in Natural History magazine that the snail has been found in gardens at San Pedro.

It does appear to be a fact that just after the war a few giant snails arrived at Long Beach from the Marianas. They are all supposed to have been corralled and killed.

Such importations are chargeable to speedy modern transportation. In former times weed seeds and other nuisances travelled more slowly in the mud on boots of soldiers and emigrants—California has scores of weeds supposed to have arrived that way. Now swift steam and swifter airplanes give unwanted tourists a better chance.

Only a few years ago the Gambia mos quito, carrying a deadly form of tropical malaria, arrived in Brazil on a plane from Africa. It killed 20,000 persons before it was brought under control by the ex penditure of millions by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Brazilian Govern ment.

Constant precautions are now taken to clear insect stowaways from planes flying to the United States from tropical coun tries. Recently, shipment of- Hawaiian orchids to San Francisco was stopped for a while for fear of the Oriental fruit fly.

The giant snail has spread from Africa into Southwest Asia, the East Indies and the Pacific islands partly with the help of man, partly by its own efforts. The Japanese introduced it into the Marianas and their mandated islands to augment the food supply; then found they didn’t like it. Neither do the native islanders like it, nor the way it eats up their plant ations. It is now a pest in the Philippines, Hawaii keeps up a constant war, so far successful, to keep it from getting a foot hold.