128 TEREDINID^. 



attention of our remote ancestors. They were perhaps 

 too much engaged in waging open war with their neigh- 

 bours^ to notice the secret and insidious attacks which 

 the shipworm made on the few vessels which then tra- 

 versed the ocean. Literature of every kind was con- 

 fined to the cloisters of the monks, who had few oppor- 

 tunities, if any, of studying marine animals. A curious 

 piece of information, however, has accidentally fallen in 

 my way on reading one of the poems in the " Black 

 book of Carmarthen,^^ which, according to Mr. Skene, 

 a learned antiquary, was compiled or written in the 

 twelfth century, and is of unquestionable authenticity. 

 It seems to show that the Teredo was at that time in- 

 digenous to our seas. Yscolan, a monk and scholar, 

 gives an account in poetical and of course hyperbolical 

 terms, of a penance which he endured for some ecclesi- 

 astical ojffence ; and the following is a literal translation 

 of the lines : — 



A full year I was placed 



At Bangor, on the pole of a weir. 



Consider thou my sufferings from sea-worms. 



One kind of Teredo (T. Norvegica) is still found in 

 the stakes of fishing weirs on the Welsh coasts. After 

 the revival of letters Hooft, a Dutch historian, appears 

 to have been the first to notice the Teredo. He says 

 the dykes in Zealand had been destroyed by these 

 vermin before the close of the 16th century. We 

 learn from Johnston's ' Thaumatographia (Historise na- 

 turalis de Insectis,' 1653), that Drake^'s flag-ship was 

 found on his return fi'om cii'cumnavigating the globe to 

 be completely riddled by it. In the ^ Ephemerides ' for 

 1666, Nitzschius recorded its appearance at Amsterdam 

 in ships which had been in the Indies, where it was 

 supposed to have originated. He describes the method 



