1908. CoLGAN. — Ship-worvis and Wood-boring Crustoceajis. 13 



^workmen there if they ever happened to come across the 

 Ship-worm. The reply was that they occasionally met with 

 it in sawing up the old piles, but that it was very hard to get 

 anything like a complete specimen. The importance of pre- 

 serving any examples that might occur was impressed on the 

 men by Mr. Gra}^ with the result that an imperfect tube, 

 eight inches long, destitute of the tail or siphon end, but 

 containing the valves and fresh remains of the animal, was 

 placed in my hands in a few days. A fortnight later, on the 

 23rd November last, another specimen was sent to me. This 

 was embedded in a 3-foot length of Memel fir, cut into three 

 sections, forming part of an old pile driven at Carlisle Pier 

 about the j'ear 1868, and removed as decayed during the 

 second week of November last. The central section, 

 i6| inches long, was bored right through, and the bore at 

 either end evidently corresponded with the bores appearing 

 in the other two sections, one of which was 9 inches and the 

 other \i\ inches long. 



On carefulh' paring down all three sections with a chisel, 

 until the bore was fully exposed, a truly magnificent speci- 

 men of Teredo norvegica was revealed, with all the essential 

 parts— -valves^ pallets, and concamerated termination of the 

 tube — intact, and with portions of the animal still present in 

 a tolerably fresh state. The bore v/as continuous in all three 

 sections, occupying the full length of the two larger, and 

 5J inches of the shorter or 9 inch section, so that the total 

 length of the bore, measured in a straight line, was 2 feet 

 9 inches. Following its sinuosities, for the bore was not 

 straight, the length of this remarkable tunnel through per- 

 fectly sound timber was fully 2 feet 10 inches. This exceeds by 

 4 inches the largest specimens I can find recorded for the 

 British Isles, Thompson's Portpatrick specimens, which in 

 some cases attained a length of nearly two feet and a half, 

 with a diameter at the larger end of |^ of an inch.^ 



The following are the principal measurements of the Kings- 

 town specimen : — Valves, J-inch broad by |-inch long ; pallets, 

 with the beaks, slightly over jf-inch long by jg-i^^h broad, 

 the beaks being je-inch long. The greatest diameter of the 



^ Edinb. New Fhilos. /outn., Jan., 1835. 



