TROUBLESOME INSECTS.
It seems practically impossible that insects should be able to„Etoy -railway trains, but this has' happened, especially so in the case of. lucusts-and wormsOn one occasion a train'going from Rome to Avozzano, in Italy, was'.stopped by a dense cloud of locusts, which settled on the wheels,and on.the rails in swarm's. As the train advanced it squashed thousands of them to a pulp, and this made, the rails;so.slippery that
the train could not go on. When a railway train was stopped by worms, which happened, on the AVar-wick-Killarney line’.' iii" Australia, it suddenly stopped dead, • and nothing could be done to restart it- The wheels slid back, but could not advance. The rails were found to be covered With worms, and, as in the former c -e. when squashed hy the wheels they made llio line too slippery for the’ train to go forward.
■ Italy seems to be a particularly unfortunate country in this rospew. as swarms of white buttsroi-ss b.-v-.. known to settle on tiie railway lines, and so make transit extremely difficult, Once in French Guiana thousands of little green frogs suddenly took up their abode on a railway track, but history keeps silent as to whether they quickly hooped off—in this or to the other worldl
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TS19200218.2.14
Bibliographic details
Star (Christchurch), Issue 19876, 18 February 1920, Page 3
Word Count
210TROUBLESOME INSECTS. Star (Christchurch), Issue 19876, 18 February 1920, Page 3
Using This Item
Star Media Company Ltd is the copyright owner for the Star (Christchurch). You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Star Media. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.