TEREDO. * 161 



through the Port- Admiral, Sir Thomas Pasley, who ex- 

 pressed his entire approval, but forwarded the application 

 to the Admiralty. It is scarcely credible that no answer 

 was received for nearly a month, and that then came a 

 simple refusal without any reason given for it ! In 

 France and Holland special commissions have been issued 

 in the hope of discovering an efficacious remedy against 

 the attacks of the shipworm ; and experiments on an ex- 

 tensive scale are still being carried on in the last men- 

 tioned country. The preliminary reports which have ap- 

 peared (especially those of the Dutch Commission in 1860, 

 1861, 1862, and 1864) show the great pains taken to 

 ascertain as well the extent of the injury as the various 

 modes already devised to prevent it. Great Britain, 

 unlike other States, does not count a single naturalist 

 in her national assembly ; and the Government will not, 

 unless urged by popular pressure, take the initiative, or 

 even forward any plan of public improvement which is 

 out of the regular groove of routine. Few persons know 

 what a Teredo is ; and the general ignorance of such 

 subjects is too great for any except zoologists to distin- 

 guish this animal from wood-gnawing crustaceans, the 

 Limnoria and Chelura. We therefore ought not to 

 laugh at the ancients for confounding the shipworm 

 with the grub of an insect. With all of us the material 

 predominates over the intellectual. Wealth and its 

 companion luxury constitute our summum bonum ; and 

 knowledge is ignored. 



" The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 

 Getting and spending we lay waste our powers ; 

 Little we see in nature that is ours ; 

 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! " 



It will of course be answered that there are other 

 things to be learnt besides the history of shipworms. 



