2GG 
APPENDIX 
[Following is a brief original paper by Mr. Hedtey. Will my readers help him to dear up the 
confusion which has gathered around our Australian form? -J.I I M.] 
MARINE WOOD-BORERS. 
BY CHARLES HEDLET, F.L.S., Assistant Curator, Australian Museum, Sidney. 
ON land, timber is destroyed by a variety of noxious animals, for it may be riddled 
by white ants, bored by tbc larvae of beetles, motbs, or. other insects, or gnawed by 
rats. In the water it is beyond the reach of these creatures, but their business is 
carried on quite as efficiently by another scries of pests. No matter whether the 
water is cold or warm, whether fresh, brackish or salt, we find that some organism 
or another is there to take its food or shelter in the wood. 
The part that insects play on land is accepted in the water-world by mollitsca 
and Crustacea or the shell-fish and the crayfish kinds. More than a century has 
elapsed since European science sent her first missionaries to the realm of Australian 
zoology, but so few are the labourers, so great is the field, that the more obscure of 
these creatures have not yet been fully studied and named. 
The first to claim our attention is Spfiaeroiua quoywia (Fig. 1), a crustacean 
half an inch long, somewhat of the form of a wood-louse, but longer and broader, 
and with a hard shell. "With its strong jaws this gnaws holes and furrows in the 
wood and ranges from low to half tide level. Not only does it consume soft and 
hard woods alike, but it even carves out burrows in the sandstone rock. Abroad, 
some kinds of Sphaeroma are known to live in fresh water, so that in tropical or 
sub-tropical Australian rivers, this pest may be expected to extend beyond the 
influence of the sea. 
A specimen of the ravages of Spltaeroma is illustrated in Fig. 2. This shows 
part of the rib of a vessel left as a wreck on the beach at Mosman's Bay, Sydney. 
At the upper end, the timber has been eaten right through by a process of gouging 
and boring. 
Apparently introduced from Europe is a far smaller wood borer, about the 
size of a grain of rice, the Gribblc or Limnoria lirjnornm. This drills small holes 
close together like those in the lid of a pepper pot; it has been found in wharves 
and vessels in Sydney Harbour.* How far from this centre of infection it has 
spread is uncertain. 
By far the largest and most destructive of the wood borers is the ship-worm, 
which may be roughly described as a modified cockle drawn out to worm shape, 
an example of which is Nausiloria t/ioracites (Fig. 3). About half a dozen 
indigenous species have been found in Australia. To these, recent writers have 
* Whitologgc-I'.ir. AiHtr. Mus. iv, I!MU, p 1 I:!. 
