54 THE ZOOLOGIST, 
three hundred and sixty pages on T'eredo, citing within it nearly 
two hundred authors, and bringing all the learning of the ancients 
and the moderns to bear on the subject.” This Dutch naturalist 
correctly recorded that the animal was a shell-fish, a fact which 
Linneus overlooked, since he placed Teredo in his heterogeneous 
group ‘‘ Vermes’’—a division comprising many widely divergent 
forms. An interesting account of the subsequent literature of 
the subject is given by Forbes and Hanley, and more recently by 
Gwyn Jeffreys, in their respective works. 
In boring the timber it is a fact of interest that the animals 
avoid the tubes of each other, though perhaps it may not be 
considered, as Sellius did, that they are actuated by a con- 
scientious anxiety to avoid injury to their fellows. Sellius, 
indeed, was of opinion that T’eredo closed in its shelly tube and 
died of starvation rather than penetrate into the tunnel of its 
neighbour. 
Stokoe* more recently made the observation that in certain 
fossils, consisting of the harder parts of the skeleton and teeth, 
the boring mollusks did not affect the enamel or enamel-like 
dentinal layer, a fact which shows that they discriminate between 
such and the parts more easily penetrated. In respect of avoid- 
ing the tunnels of its neighbours, Teredo offers a contrast to 
Limnoria, for in the stakes of the nets for Salmon on the West 
Sands, at St. Andrews, the tunnels of the latter sometimes 
meet, and thus the young, ten or twelve of which occasionally 
accompany the parents at the end of the burrow, may more 
readily spread throughout the wood. 
The destruction caused by the animals in the harbours of 
our own country is considerable, since it has been computed 
that at Plymouth and Devonport alone many thousands of 
pounds’ worth of wood are annually destroyed. The French 
and Dutch, however, suffer much more seriously, the former in 
regard to harbours, the latter in regard to piles. Special com- 
missions in both countries have, indeed, been appointed to in- 
vestigate the subject, and various reports have been issued, to 
some of which allusion will by-and-by be made. 
The opinion of the older authors that the valves of the 
Teredo were the teeth by means of which it gratified its appetite 
** © Nature,’ vol. xx. p. 428, 1879. 

