Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1899 — They Are Small. [ARTICLE]

They Are Small.

More trains are stopped by insects in India than brigands. Locusts have a fancy for sitting on the railway lines. When the engine wheel touches them they are crushed, leaving the rail so oily that’ the wheel slips. When this occurs as the train is climbing a steep gradient It is serious. * Oysters, paradoxical as it may seem, have now joined the ranks of the enemies of enterprise. Some gourmand suggested the Indian harbor of Tuticorin, on the Madras Coast, as a suitable place for oyster beds, and the Madras government, doubtless appreciating the value of oysters either for eating or for pearls, turned a deaf ear to conservative remonstrance. Time has, however, justified the remonstrants, for, though the projectors have got an abundant supply of oysters, the harbor of Tutlcorln Is now said to be in danger of total destruction by the growth of the beds. The Madras coast is so illfavored that harbors are more valuable than oysters, and a campaign will be directed against the latter, although the authorities hanker after the taxes on the pearl fishery.