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SOME TENANTS OF BANANA-CRATES.
By PERCY THOMPSON.
THE Borough of West Ham contains within its boundaries
some of the largest Docks on the river Thames, including
the Royal Victoria Dock and parts of the Royal Albert Dock
and the King George V Dock : it also possesses one of the chief
East London markets, the Stratford Market. It is, therefore,
not surprising that, with an enormous amount of foreign produce
continually arriving locally, animal stowaways arc met with
from time to time, some of which are brought in, as curiosities,
to the Stratford Museum.
The shiploads of bananas brought from the West; Indies
and Brazil often include such involuntary imports and a curious
collection of these creatures was exhibited to the Club at its
meeting on the 30th January last. In view of the heterogeneous
character of these alien immigrants it will be worth-while giving
a list of them. I should add that the specific identifications are
on the authority of the British Museum experts, who have
examined the various animals. All the specimens were still
alive on arrival and some survived for a considerable period.
A large centipede, Scolopendra gigas, and a millepede,
Spirobolus cupulifer, which are of only occasional occurrence,
serve as introduction to the spiders, which are perhaps the most
frequent fellow-travellers with the bananas. The large, hairy,
so-called "Bird-eating Spiders," Euripelma sp., are common
and will live in captivity for months, or even for a year or two,
on a diet of cockroaches. One of these spiders spun its egg-
cocoon in its cage and from it a swarm of tiny spiderlings
hatched out and Jived for many days.
Another spider, Heteropoda venatoria, a tropical house-spider,
of which several examples have occurred, also spun a cocoon,
which it carried about attached beneath its cephalothorax,
unlike the "bird-eating" species which does not trouble to do
this. A third spider which occurred was Ctenus Keyserlingi.
A small scorpion, Isometrus maculatus, completes the arachnids
observed.
Various insects were noted, the most frequent being
orthopterons. The two large cockroaches Periplaneta americana
and P. australasia were less common than the small delicate