Toilers in the Sea

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI. EXCAVATORS. EXCAVATORS, or boring animals, are some of them so destructive, in the pursuit of their legitimate occupation, that they have obtained an unenviable notoriety amongst men, who are often scheming to circumvent them in their nefarious designs. Although somewhat beyond the scope of our original design to include the marine mollusks within our category, yet, as a preliminary to the more minute and insignificant excavators, it will be necessary to devote a few lines to the boring mollusks. Foremost, perhaps, in notoriety will be the Teredo, that terror of shipowners, and those interested in wooden structures exposed to the sea. These creatures have the audacity to attack every piece of wood which comes within their reach, perforating it in all directions, until at last it crumbles at a touch. Many a ship has split in the open sea, through the planks having been drilled by this insidious invader. The hardest oak or teak wood is no obstacle to its depredations. "The animal always tunnels in the direction of the grain, and if in its course it meets with another, engaged in the same process, it alters the direction of its course, so that a piece of wood attacked by many Teredos becomes completely honey-combed." In the beginning of the century, half the coast of Holland was threatened with the invasion of the sea, because the piles, which upheld the dykes, were attacked by the Teredo; and it required an outlay of a large sum of money to secure the country from the disaster of an inundation, caused by a contemptible mollusk. "The body of the Teredo is long and worm-like; its colour greyish-white (fig. 66). At one end is a knot, improperly called its head, and the other extremity bifurcates into what may be called two tails....