The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-18
ANIMAL STOWARAYS.
4 TERY INTERESTING CASE IN
 COURT
A Cat in a Coal Mine-Blrds Abonrd
 ship.

One of the oldest cases which have come before the courts since the pass
 ing of the employers liability act was recently decided against colliery com pany. The parents of boy employed
 in the workings complained that he had
 been so terrified by an animal nthe
 dark galleries of the mine that he had
 been unconscious for some time, and
 had been suffering in health ever since.
 The creature, which was described as having enormous yellow eyes, had rushed past him in the dark, and
 caused the shock from which he was
 suffering. The company pleaded that it was only cat; but there was probably
 something to be said for the boys point
 of view, for the eyes of some animals have the property of concentrating and lreflecting light from a candle or lan-
 tern. until, for example, the eyes of a
 COW acrfoss which the gleam of a 1 light comes appear at a distance of
 hundred yards like two green lamps on
 train.
 Another question is how a cat came
 to be in a coal mine some thousand feet
 deep The answer is that there nearly always are both cats, rats and mice in
 coal mines, and that these almost in- cariably find their way down as stow aways." With the exception of the pit ponies, all the fauna of a coal mine descend the shafts i'll this illicit man.
 ner. They include various flies and moths. beetles, weevils, mice, rats and cats, each and every one of which has descended in the "sages" which take down the men, or in the "corves'' which take coal up, and sometimes carry
 stores. The insects find their way to the bottom hidden partly in the ponies corn and hay, and partly in the wood used for supporting the galleries. The hot atmosphere of the mine is the very place for hatching out or bringing to perfection the eggs and larvae of the wood-boring flies and beetles. The case in which a portion of the workings
 of colliery were abandoned for a time because the men were afraid of the mosquitoes" in them has been re- ferred to previously in the Spectators:
 but the species which the men called mosquitoes has subsequently trans pired. They were ''tipula' flies, of the very largest size, Tipula gigas by name. These are yellow, broad-winged insects. larger than a hornet, with long sharp ovispositor, or egg-laying spike, which gives the impression of being a formid-
 able sting. Other kinds of ichneumon flies, not so large, but very unpleasant to look upon, also haunt colleries. In both cases the larvae are carried down in the timber. The mice and rats go into the pit in the bundles of straw
 and oats which are taken to cut up and wix with the ponies food. They find
 plenty to eat, both waste corn and fragments from the mems meals brought into the mine. An underground population of fifty or sixty ponies and a thousand colliers leaves an ample margin for mice and rats. The colliery
 cats are sometimes the descendants of pet kittens taken down by pit boys, and |sometimes of cats brought underground on purpose to keep down the mice But the curiosity of cats Is insatable, es- pecially where anything like big hole in the ground attracts them. A cat well known In the building on the sur face will sometimes appear in the work ings below, the explanation given be- ing that 1t has jumped into the cage when the men were entering, and de- scended with them.
 Several species of ichneumon flies ar- rive in this country as "stowaways'' of 8 peculiarly unpleasant kind. They
 come over hidden as grubs in the bod ies of living insects. Many species of for hut ially the beautiful moon moths and other silk-producing species are im- ported in the form of caterpillars or CO.,
 coons. In the body of the caterpillar some foreign inchneumon fly has laid its eggs, in India, perhaps, or Assam,
 or China. The egg develops into a grub, and lives in the tissues, first of the caterpillar, and then of the chry- sails or pupa, which it kills. though, as the latter is often enveloped in a CO.,
 coon, what is taking place cannot be seen. Instead of a beautiful moth or butterfly shaking out and expanding its swiftly opening wings on which color appears keeping pace with their mira culous growth, the collector sees his glass butterfly cage filling with these
 cruel-loozing foreign inchneumon flies, sometimes in greater numbers than the proportion of moths or butterflies of
 the kind expected from his cocoons.
 New York has for many years re-
 ceived numbers of destitute aliens of
 the animal world from the holds of the
 banana ships.
 The trade in banans is an enormous one, and many of them come from sources at no great distance, whence the fruit can be brought without cold
 storage. The big clusters of bananas
 the peculiarly adapted for harboring
 "stowaways" Among these are enum-
 erated numbers of small harmless snakes, lizards of various kinds, occa-
 sionally, it is said, young iguuna, and large and particularly venomous spid- CTS. But real pests which survive and
 increase in new country are fortu-
 nately, rarely stransported accidentIy.
 The one serious instance in the chigo
 or digger" It is said to have been transported from Central America to the East Indies in the feet of Indian coolies, and by other Indian coolies to the coast of East Africa. The Cobra
 do beetle has never succeeded in mak- ing home in England, though mos
 quitoes'' of a peculiarly ferocious
 though non-nalarial, kind, are said to have appeared in English hotels. Sev-
 eral corn-beetles, a very destructive type of insect, and among the greatest
 enemies of those who would like to