THE SHIPWORMS OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



By Paul Bartsch 



('orator. Division of Mollusks, United States National Museum 



Our card catalogue of the Philippine mollusks contains no reference 

 to shipworms in Philippine waters. I fear that the work during the 

 Philippine Expedition of the United States Bureau of Fisheries 

 Steamer Albatross also failed to stress this much neglected field of 

 research. This is not to be wondered at since shipworms are among 

 the most inconspicuous mollusks that the sea harbors. Pilings and 

 drift wood infested by them rarely ever proclaim their presence until 

 they begin to disintegrate, for the tiny punctures on their outer sur- 

 face are too small to reveal the enemy gnawing at their heart. It is 

 only when a great efflorescence of these forms produces an outbreak 

 that threatens all unprotected shipping in a region, that they come 

 to their own and are allotted a conspicuous status for interfering with 

 the economics of man. The importance which the ship worm problem 

 iuis assumed since the outbreak in San Francisco Bay, California, 

 during 1919-20 would, were I again to visit the Philippines, cause 

 me to keep a sharper lookout for shallow water forms than I did 

 during the Albatross expedition, and I am sure that such an effort 

 would result in the material expansion of the list here offered. 



Most of the shipworms here described were taken from pieces of 

 wood brought up by our dredge sometimes from considerable depth, 

 at various stations. It is a remarkable fact that our dredging at the 

 mouth of rivers, even when these emptied into semienclosod bays, 

 yielded only fragments of wood, and these fragments were always 

 honey-combed and riddled by boring mollusks which destroy the 

 water-logged wood in such places and prevents the formation of wood 

 deposits in salt water lagoons. 



I wish here to express my appreciation to John A. Mirguet, pre- 

 parator in the Division of Mollusks of the United States National 

 Museum, for it was his skillful excavating that has kept the pallets 

 associated with the shell to which they belong. Only those who 

 have attempted work of this kind when dealing with dry riddled 

 wood, will realize the great care and patience necessary for this 



5:v.\ 



