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_-___CHAPTER VI
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Boring'Lüe_ _.
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OF all. the creatures_ which inhabit the sea, _few _are more
interesting than those which here into wood or stone and
live within the burrows they construct.
one
Certainly
do so much damage as the wood -bdrers, notahly the dreaded
Shipworm which,
dawn of history, has been re—
corded as the cause of grave damage to wooden Ships.
The galleys of Greece and Rome in Classic times, those of
Venice in the Middle Ages,and Drake’s famous Golden
Hind, all were riddled with the burrows of the Shipworm
which has even threatened,
on the dykes,
the
existence "of ' "HOlland.
Although in modern
times the steel hulls of the majority of ships have nothing .
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to fear from it, the Shipworm-sti'dces great damage to
wharves and
made of wood ;_ so great indeed that both
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in this country and int-he United States extensive investiga—
tions have been set on foot in the hope of discovering some
means of combating its ravages and those of its accomphees.
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WOOD BORERS
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‘The wood borers may be divided into two groups, those
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which are molluscan and those which are crustacean.
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The
former are the more important and we Will consider them
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rst.
The Shipworin is the most outstanding of these for,
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in spite of its commonname and naked,
body,
it
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is really a bivalve mollusc which has taken
to a very extra-_
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ordinary mode of life and become,_as a result, very unhkô
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