TEREDO. 61 



with Xylophaga and Pholas are so evident and close, that 

 we prefer placing it along with them, regarding the differ- 

 ences, however important, rather as such as mark the rapid 

 anamorphoses of organisation exhibited by most outlying 

 families of every order, than as grounds for the establish- 

 ment of this genus alone as the type of an isolated group. 



The Teredo was known to the ancients, though it is dif- 

 ficult to separate the allusions made to it in Greek and 

 Latin authors from those alluding to wood-perforating in- 

 sects. Aristotle has frequently been quoted as mention- 

 ing the Teredo under the name of Tsv^^^j^wi', in the ninth 

 book of the " History of Animals ;" but the animal there 

 spoken of is evidently some flying vespiform insect. The 

 mention by Theophrastus, of " worms which corrupt wood 

 in the sea," is more likely to refer to our animal. Of 

 Pliny's large-headed Teredo, " which gnaws with teeth, 

 and lives only in the sea," there can be no mistake; nor re- 

 specting the allusion to ship- worms by Ovid. The ques- 

 tion, whether the Teredo was known to the ancients, was 

 once much discussed, for it was a popular fancy, at the com- 

 mencement of the last century, that this mollusk had been 

 newly imported into Europe from the Eastern seas — evi- 

 dently one of those rapid and absurd conclusions every 

 now and then taken up by great bodies of people without 

 ground or inquiry ; for, as Deshayes has pointed out, Dutch 

 writers, as long ago as 1580, complained that the shipworm 

 was damaging Holland. The argument of Deshayes, that 

 the presence of fossil Teredines in the tertiaries of Europe is 

 proof sufficient of their constant presence from antiquity in 

 our seas, is not so sound, although it has been very gene- 

 rally received with favour. For it is now known that 

 numerous 3IolhiSca, identical with existing species, retired 

 from the seas of Europe in the interval between the mio- 



