Introdncv ion. 



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My work on the "Ship-v/omis" v/as first suggested by 

 Professor \Y. K. Brooks, His constant interest and sympathy 

 throiighovit my stay at the Johns Hopkins Universitj/ have been 

 of great help to me and it gives me great pleasure to ac- 

 knowledge my indebtedness to him. My material vms collected 

 at Beaufort, North Carolina, during tlie summers of 1S95 and 

 1396 » and my study '.js been continued in tlie laboratory in 

 Baltimore. To the Authorities of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity I am under deep obligations, both for the privileges 

 of the marine laboratories at the seaside, and for facili- 

 ties for Vi'ork in ihe laboratory in Baltimore. 



The " SI: ip- worms" were favorite objects for study 

 during the eighteenth century, on account of their great 

 ' damage to the dykes of Holland in 1733 and subsequent years. 

 The first modern observations wore those of Valisnieri (1715) 

 and Deslandes (1720) After 1733, came Mossuet, J. Roussot, 

 and especially Godfrey Sellius. These observers seem to 

 have boon unaware oi' the ancient observations mentioned by 

 Theophrastus , Pliny and Ovid, and it was supposed the "Ship- 

 v^onns" were natives or India, wiience they- •■ '^ '-^•^'-! brought 



