Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1890 — Worms That Bat Steel. [ARTICLE]

Worms That Bat Steel.

For the ipast two years the German. Government has been, making inquiries into the life, history and ravages of one of the most reniarkable worms known to exist. This wonderful creature, whose gluttonops appetite is only satisfied after a feed on common steel, was first brought into general notice by an article in the Cologne GaJfrfftt inf'June. 18SZ. . n For some time* preceding the publication of mentioned, the gnjatest consternation existed among the engineers employed on the railway at Hagen, by accidents, which always occurred at the same plac?, proving that some terrible defect must exist either in the material or the construction of the rails. The Government became interested and sent a commission to the spot for the purpose of maintaining a constent watch at the spot where the accidents, one of them attended with loss of life, had occurred. It was not, t however, until after six months had elapsed, that the surface of the rails appeared to be conoded, as if by acid, to the extent of over 100 yards. . The rail wag taken up and broken, whereupon it was found to be literally honeycombed by a thin, thread-like gray, worn. The worm is said to be two centimeters in length and about the bigness of a common knitting-needle. It is of a light-gray color, and on the head it carries two little sacs, or glands, filled with a most powerful corrosive secretion, which is ejected every ten ‘minutes when the little demon is lying undisturbed. This liquid, when squirted upon iron, renders that metal soft and spongy and of the color of rust, when it is easily and greedily devoured by the little inAect. “There is no exaggeration,” says the official report, “in the assertion that this creature is one of the most voracious, for it has devoured thirty-six kilogrammes of rai.s in a fortnight."— St. Louts Retrublic.