PERFORATIONS OF MARINE ANIMALS. 53 
and other woody fruits in tropical seas, has extremely contorted 
tubes, from the limited area at its disposal. 
In connection with distribution it was formerly supposed that 
Teredo did not bore under twenty fathoms, but it is quite a 
common thing to dredge pieces of water-logged wood from much 
sreater depths with the living mollusks in the perforations, as in 
the deeps off St. Abb’s Head and beyond the Island of May. 
Certain foreign species, again, live both in fresh water and in 
brackish, one, for instance, burrowing in the roots of the man- 
srove treés in the rivers on the West Coast of Africa, into which 
the sea-water penetrates only at intervals. 
As might have been expected from their marked effects on 
submerged wood, these boring mollusks were well known to the 
ancients. As Forbes and Hanley and others state, they (Tere- 
dines) are mentioned for the first time in the ‘‘ Knights’”’ of 
Aristophanes. Theophrastus, the favourite pupil of Aristotle, also 
probably alludes to Teredo when he speaks of ‘‘ worms which 
corrupt wood in the sea.” Pliny the elder designates the same 
form as the large-headed T'eredo ‘‘ which gnaws with teeth and 
lives only in the sea”’; and similar easily recognisable allusions 
are made by Ovid and other authors. The ravages made by 
Teredo on the piles composing the dykes for resisting the inroads 
of the sea in Holland, however, prominently brought it before 
the natives of that country, and three investigators took it in 
hand between 1720 and 17383, viz. Massuet, Rousset, and Sellius. 
On the present occasion it is unnecessary to enter into an 
account of the labours of each of these, but an excellent résumé 
is given in the ‘ British Mollusca’ by the accomplished authors, 
Prof. Hdward Forbes and Sylvanus Hanley. One paragraph only 
need be quoted. It is:—‘‘ Massuet was a Belgian, and had been 
a Benedictine monk, but became a Protestant and took refuge in 
Holland, where he studied medicine under Boerhaave. He was 
fortunate ; for, dividing his time between his patients and his 
researches, he saved enough to buy a seigneurie and die rich. 
He wrote on history and natural philosophy. Rousset began 
life as a soldier, and quitted the sword for the birch. He would 
not have meddled with the T’eredo, but that it took part itself in 
the political prospects of Europe. Sellius was a native of 
Dantzic, very learned but very unfortunate. He wrote a work of 
