Daily Republican., 1882-05-26
EOe Oemies Of the Wires.

| says
II you will kick or pound on q telt
graph pole,or place your ear against Oh
on windy day. what will 1t remin'
you of? A hive of bees ? precisely. -
So it does the bears in Norway. Bear
are passionatelv foud of honey, an,
when, In one of the wild districts, bruil
hears the humming Of the wires, he fol
lows the sound to the post where it i
loudest and begins TO tear away th
stones heaped around the posts in roci
soil to steady them, in order to get q
the hive which he imagines to be there
In his disappointment and disgust h'
claws in the wood.
Nor is he the only victim of the wires.
In the electric exhibition of Paris they
sho~ the top of thick pine telegraph
post through which woodpecker has
drilled q ho several inches in diam
eter. The bird had apparently perched
on the pole and taken the hum mines ol
the wires for the buzzing OF nest OF
insects in the wood, aud he set himself
manfully-or birdfully-to dig them
out.
Wolves will not stay in Norway
where telegraph line has been built.
1t was formerly the custom to protect
farms by planting poles around them
strung with corks, something like rab.
bit snares, and gradually the wolves
came t. respect these precautions, so
that a line stretched across the neck OF
a peninsula would pl otect the whole
district. The wolves take the telegraph
for new and improved snare, and
promptly leave the country where a
liue is built.
In our own treeless plains the butfa-
10 halls the telegraph poles as An inge.
NOUS contrivance for his own benefit.
Like all cattle he delights in scratch
ing himself, and he goes through the
performance so energetically that he
knocks down the post. An early bull
der of the telegraph untertook to pro-
tect the posts by inserting brad law Is
into the wood, but the thick.skinned
buffalo found the brad.awl an improve
ment, as affording him new sensa-
ton and scratched down more poles
than ever.
In Sumatra the elephants are syste-
matically opposed to telegraph lines,
and at least twenty times year make
raids on them.
In May, 1870, the elephants tore
down the poles for the distance of sew
eral furlongs, aud hid the wires and
insulators in the cane jungle, and for
three nights in succession they re-
peated the performances as regularly
as the repairers built the line during
the day.
The monkeys and apes are about as
formidable enemies, as they use the
wires for swings and trapezes, and
carry off the glass insulators as valuable
prizes then, when the repairer goes to
correct the mischief they may bs
bounced upon by q tiger or driven to
post by mad buffalo.
In Japan the special enemies OF the
telegraph are spiders, which grow to an
immense size, and avail themselves of
the wires as excellent frameworks for
their webs. So thick are the cord the
Japanese spiders spin that often, es-
pecially when they are covered with
dew, they serve to connect the wires
with each other or with the ground,
and so to stop them from working.
In the sea the wires are not any safer,
as small worm has developed since
cables came in fashion which bores its
way through iron wire and gutta per-
cha, lets in the water, and 80 destroys
line worth millions of dollars.
When great storm comes on in the
centre of the ocean and tie cable breaks
while it is being laid, or threatens to
break, no one is alarmed. They fasten
the cable to a buoy and come after
ward and pick it up, or if it is at the
bottom of the sea, they drop a dredge
with a mile or so Of rope and fish out
the precious thread, as large as one OF
your fngers, almost as easily as you
would fish up penny from the bottom
of tub Of water with the tongs. But
the little worm no bigger than a
needle is more formidable than the ele-
phant on shore or the hurricane at sea