CHAPTER VI 

 Boring Life 



Of all the creatures which inhabit the sea, few are more 

 interesting than those which bore into wood or stone and 

 live within the burrows they construct. None certainly 

 do so much damage as the wood borers, notably the dreaded 

 Shipworm which, since the dawn of history, has been re- 

 corded as the cause of grave damage to wooden ships. 

 The galleys of Greece and Rome in classic times, those of 

 Venice in the Middle Ages, and Drake's famous Golden 

 Hind, all were riddled with the burrows of the Shipworm 

 which has even threatened, by its attack on the dykes, 

 the very existence of Holland. Although in modern 

 times the steel hulls of the majority of ships have nothing 

 to fear from it, the Shipworm still does great damage to 

 wharves and piers made of wood ; so great indeed that both 

 in this country and in the United States extensive investiga- 

 tions have been set on foot in the hope of discovering some 

 means of combating its ravages and those of its accomplices. 



Wood Borers 



The wood borers may be divided into two groups, those 

 which are molluscan and those which are crustacean. The 

 former are the more important and we will consider them 

 first. The Shipworm is the most outstanding of these for, 

 in spite of its common name and naked, worm-like body, it 

 is really a bivalve mollusc which has taken to a very extra- 

 ordinary mode of life and become, as a result, very unlike 



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