INANIMATE ANIMALS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

INANIMATE ANIMALS.

A GALLERY OF QUEER NAMES. THE MINER'S ODD ZOO. Remarkable is the number of animals which never owned hide or fur. One could almost stock a menagerie with them. The miner is particularly fond of technical animals. For instance, he uses a "dog" .to fasten down the tramlines along which the coal tubs travel. It is a sort of steel spike, short and very strong. The miner's "cat," on the other hand, is a lump of soft but tenacious clay with which a "shot" or explosive charge is tamped home. When a wire haulage rope breaks its ravelled ends invariably become twisted into a tangled mass, which the underground worker terms a "hedgehog." "Crows" in a coal mine is a term for a poor kind of coal hardly worth the trouble of cutting. "Peacocks" is a name for a much better quality, distinguished by a peculiar rainbow iridescence. In Scotland there is found a variety known as "parrot" coal.

Sometimes when at work in his "stall," the chamber from the walls of which he is cutting the black diamonds, the miner finds a "horse." This invariably annoys him intensely, especially if he is doing piece-work, for a "horse" in coal-mining parlance is a mass of useless stone or rock which usually has to be blasted away before work can proceed. A "bull' if? another animal which the miner detests; the term is applied to a shot which has blown out —failed to produce a fall of coal.

A part of the axle of a tub. or cowe, froes by the name of a "cod," while a "fish-head" is a tool in frequent use in connection with the big pumps which keep a colliery clear of water. A "goose" is an appliance which automatically stops runaway trucks, and a "crab" is a part of a windlass.

Even insects figure amdng the miner's zoological collection, for he has a "butterfly" valve and a "grasshopper" motor. He may also use the heavy mallet known as a "beetle," though this is more employed above ground for the purpose of driving splitting wedges into logs of wood. Sometimes the engineer's classification seems to the naturalist s mind queer, for, according to him, the "monkey" is nothing

but a big form of "beetle." It is, in fact, a great weight used with block and tackle for pounding piles into the ground, and sometimes for breaking up old iron.

You will see a "monkey" in almost any shipbuilding yard. In the same ;jlact you will discover a "crane," an appliance too well known by sight to require any description. In railway shops electric cranes are common, and there also you will doubtless find plenty of "fish plates" —the flat plates of iron used to clamp together two rails.

On board a steamer we shall find a "donkey" engine, but for a "mule" we must visit a Lancashire cotton factory. It is a machine used in cloth making.

It is rather difficult to say why a certain form of sea wall is known as a "mole," for a mole is entirely a land animal. It is easier to understand why the great steel prow of a battleship is called a "ram." It is evidently meant for butting.

Among every carpenter's possessions will be found a "rabbit" plane. Equally mysterious is the reason why another form of the same tool is called a "bull." The Stock, Exchange "bull" is a much less technical creature. Presumably he tosses shares high in the air, while the "bear" makes great efforts to hug them and bring them to earth again. Xor would anyone have to think twice why the do-nothing director of some "wildcat" company is called a "guinea pig."

A bachelor assembly is often known as a "stag" party; the old "fourwheeler''' cab was called a "flv."

Alcohol is distilled by means of a "worm/' Kaw iron poured into a sand mould becomes a "pig." On the racecourse you may, if you are extremely fortunate, win a "monkey," but most consider themselves fortunate if a "pony" happens their way.

The technical "tiger" boy may be less alarming than the genuine article; but the "cat" which a bandit gets is a cruel and biting creature.

Perhaps oddest of the technical creatures is the "magpie" on a target.