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CHAPTER III 

 THE FAUNA OF THE RAILROAD 



THE railway fauna, other than the horses used to 

 shunt the trucks, is an amusing growth of recent 

 years. Numbers of animals which at first resented 

 or feared the trains have now become railway volun- 

 teers or hangers-on in some form or another. Most 

 of them, like the visitors to Mr. Dooley's bar, come 

 there for refreshment and change. But some have 

 taken to the iron road as a regular means of getting 

 a living, or of adding to their resources. There is 

 hardly a country in the world in which some wild 

 creatures are not regular waiters on the trains, or 

 haunters of the line itself or of the stations. The 

 earliest impressions excited by the railway on animal 

 minds are not always favourable. The buffalo used 

 occasionally to charge the cars of the trans-continental 

 lines in America, and a male wild Indian elephant 

 fought with, and was vanquished by, a contractor's 

 engine. When the first of all Indian lines was opened 

 from Burwan to Calcutta, a holy Brahmini bull con- 

 ceived that the engine was in some sense an outrage 

 and gave it battle, with disastrous results. Some fear 

 was felt as to the effect which this untoward incident 

 might have on the people, whose sacred animal had 



