170 TEREDINID^. 



gates of harbours and docks^ as well as occasionally the 

 stakes of fishing-weirs, and submerged trees, all around 

 our coasts from Alderney (Lukis) to Shetland (J. G. J.). 

 It is, however, a local species. The variety is sometimes 

 met with. Fossil valves have been found in blue clay at 

 Belfast (Hyndman), and in an oak tree dug up in exca- 

 vating a deep sewer there (Thompson) ; in a piece of wood, 

 more than twenty feet below the surface, at Ayr (Lands- 

 borough) : and sheaths in a fossil state have been found by 

 Mr. Grainger in the Belfast clay-beds, by Mr. Maw at 

 Strethill, and by Mr. S. Wood in the Red and Coralline 

 Crag. Newer Italian tertiaries (Soldani and Brocchi) . 

 The foreign distribution of this species extends from 

 Finmark (Sars, M^ Andrew, and Danielssen) to Algiers 

 (Deshayes) . It inhabits the boughs of trees laid down 

 in Kiel bay for the mussel-fishing (Meyer); and the 

 variety destroys, in conjunction Tvith T. minima, the 

 fixed stages for shipping marble from the quarries at 

 Marola on the coast of Piedmont (Capellini) . 



Olaf Worm first recorded it, in his ' Museum Wormi- 

 anum' (1655), from Bergen. The pallets bear some 

 resemblance to battledores or to the bats of French 

 washerwomen; they arc not unfrequently distorted. 

 Montagu fancied that the imbricated plates which line 

 the neck of the sheath might be intended to ensnare 

 the animalcula on which this Teredo feeds. He does 

 not say what kind of a trap they make. According to 

 Deshayes, Algerian specimens are much smaller than 

 those of Europe. Some sheaths at Port Patrick were 

 said by Mr. Thompson to have attained the extraordinary 

 length of 24 feet. I am not aware that this species has 

 ever been found in floating wood ; the specimens men- 

 tioned in the ' British MoUusca ' from this source, as if 

 on my authority, were the young of T. megotara. 



