Gottfried Sellius was a German naturalist and translator active in the mid-eighteenth century. He received his doctorate in Leiden in 1730 and remained in the city for five years before taking up a position as professor of Law at the University of Göttingen. In 1733, he published this book on his studies into ships’ timbers and shipworms. The work was influential in persuading nations to research and introduce new technologies to limit the damage done by shipworms. In the Netherlands, stone dikes were built to replace wooden ones and in Britain, the Royal Navy began to apply copper to the hulls of ships.