TIMBERS. 345 
(Government Printer, Sydney). The paper is illustrated by 
numerous plates showing the apparatus employed, and also 
showing graphically the stresses to which the timbers were 
subjected. An autographic stress-strain apparatus (designed by 
Prof. Warren and Mr. J. A. McDonald) was used. 
ENEMIES OF CoLoniaL TimBER (Xylophages or Wood-eaters). 
The following animals are referred to in the section 
““Timbers”’ as being injurious to wood; it may, therefore, be 
interesting to have a few notes about them :— 
Chelura terebrans, a small Amphipodous Crustacean which 
bores in wood-work immersed in sea-water. (For figure, see 
Treasury of Natural History, p. 123.) 
Cobra is the vernacular name given to certain molluscs, 
Calobates Sp., etc., very destructive to wood immersed in sea-water. 
In the Zrans. Linn. Soc. vol. xxv., 564, is a paper by 
Professor Percival Wright, on the Zeredide. In that paper 
he describes and figures two new species, Calobates australis, 
destructive to timber at Fremantle, Western Australia, and 
Nausitoria Saulii, similarly destructive in~Port Philip, Victoria. 
Leredo, or “‘Ship-worm,” is the name given to a genus of 
testaceous molluscs, which form their habitations by boring holes 
in submerged timber, and thereby occasion destructive ravages in 
ships’ bottoms, sunken piles, etc. The Zeredo navalis is worm- 
shaped, and about six inches long. (See figure in Cassell’s 
Natural History.) In making its excavations into the wood, 
which it does by boring into the substance in the direction of the 
grain, each individual is careful to avoid the tube made by its 
neighbour, and often a very thin leaf of wood alone is left between; 
it also, when a knot occurs in its path, makes a turn to avoid it. 
(Treasury of Natural History.) 
However, ‘but for the maligned Zeredo, the sea would be so 
covered with floating logs as to be to some extent unnavigable ; 
the rivers of warm latitudes would be choked up by the accumu- 
lated drift-wood at their mouths, and their fertile banks would, in 
many cases, be converted into morasses.”’ (Dr. Ball, quoted by 
Patterson.) 
