Abstract
IN Mr. J. Starkie Gardner's lecture on The Tropical Forests of Hampshire (NATURE, vol. xv. p. 232), the following statement occurs which is open, I think, to considerable question:— “All the shipworms generally known to us live only in salt-water, and are so delicately organised that the slightest mixture of fresh-water instantly kills them.” This sweeping assertion is partly qualified by allusion to the occurrence of a species described by Mr. George Jeffries as inhabiting fresh-water, and the fact of bored wood being found 300 miles up the Gambia River; still as Mr. Gardner speaks of these facts as a “theory” still in need of verification, I would point out that no waters are more infested with the shipworm than the deltas of tropical rivers wherein the water is often largely brackish if not potable.
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THEOBALD, W. Tropical Forests of Hampshire. Nature 15, 530 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/015530c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015530c0
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