5. Notice of the Ravages of the Limnoria Terebrans on Creosoted Timber

Extract

The author stated that it would be difficult to estimate the value of any chemical or mechanical process whereby timber might be rendered permanently impervious to the ravages of the Limnoria terebrans, that small but sure destroyer of timber structures exposed to the action of the sea.

The ravages of that crustacean were first observed in 1810 by Mr Robert Stevenson, the engineer of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, in the timber supports of the temporary beacon used by him in the erection of that work. Having forwarded specimens of the insect, and of the timber it had destroyed, to Dr Leach, the eminent Naturalist of the British Museum, Dr Leach, in 1811, announced it as a “new and highly interesting species which had been sent to him by his friend Robert Stevenson, civil engineer,” and assigned to it the name of Limnoria terebrans (Linnean Trans., vol. xi. p. 370, and Edinburgh Encyclopædia, vol. vii. p. 433).