and hollis thairof growis small wormis. First they schaw their heid and feit, and last of all they schaw their plumis and wyngis." Boece had evidently some idea of a normal process of generation, for, after scoffing at the prevalent belief of the "rude and ignorant pepyl" that the geese were produced by the trees fringing the shore, and fell, like over-ripe fruit, into the water, and then straightway swam away, he proceeds to state "that als sone as their appillis or frutis fallis of the tre in the see flude, they grow first wormeetin, and be schort process of tyme ar alterat in geis."

"Old Gerarde" substantially repeats the same tale in his Appendix to his "Herball," affirming that, "There are found in the north part of Scotland, and the islands adjacent, called Orchades,* certaine trees, whereon doe growe certain shell-fishes, of a white colour, tending to russet; wherein are conteined little living creatures; which shels in time of maturitie doe open, and out of them grow those little living foules, whom we call Barnakles, in the north of England Brant Geese, and in Lancashire tree Geese; but the other that do fall upon the land perish and come to nothing." All this is hearsay; but he goes on to describe "what our eis have seene, and hands have touched," in a "small island in Lancashire, called the Pile of Foulders," which seems to have been a receptacle and lumberroom for all the "flotsam and jetsam" of the waves of the Irish Channel.t

Besides giving a rough woodcut, showing all the phases in the produce of the Bernicle-tree, from the stage of branch-bud to the launch of its fledgling fruit on the surrounding waters, he solemnly remarks:

"The Historie whereof to set foorth according to the woorthiness and raritie thereof, woulde not onely require a large and peculiar volume, but also a deeper search into the bowels of nature then my intended purpose wil suffer me to wade into, my insufficiencie also considered, leaving the historie thereof rough hewen unto some excellent men, learned in the secrets of nature, to be both fined and refined; in the mean space take it as it falleth out, the naked and bare truth, though unpolished."

About a century later we come across 66 a fined and refined " version of this "rough hewen historie," in "A Relation concerning Barnacles, by Sir Robert Moray, lately one of His

**

The Orkneys; not far from that "Ultima Thule" which would have been a limit to all flying legends.

† Probably Peel Island, the Pile of Fouldrey ("la peele de Foddray," or the Pylle of Folder). See Baines' "History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster," vol. ii. p. 651. London: 1870.

Majesties Council for the kingdom of Scotland," which was read before the Royal Society, and published in its "Philosophical Transactions." The shells are described as hanging from a fragment of a fir-tree, cast up on the island of East [Uist], by a pedicle "not unlike the windpipe of a chicken," which is not unnaturally regarded as a kind of suction apparatus The shells are for the withdrawal of nutriment from the tree.

further stated each to be divided into five sections (see fig. 2),

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by cross seams or sutures," and to have within them "little Birds, perfectly shaped, supposed to be Barnacles."

Having traced this interesting story to the publications of a learned society, "nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri," as

its motto sets forth, I have, I hope, gently bridged over the gulf between myth and fact, marvel and the comparatively commonplace. But before quitting the region of romance for strictly prosaic and matter-of-fact territory, I would direct attention to a curiously parallel story which Professor Max Müller omits to mention in his otherwise most exhaustive account of the Barnacle-tree myth. This will be found in chapter xxvi. of "The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knt.," which treats "Of the Contries and Yles that ben bezonde the Lond of Cathay; and of the Frutes there," &c. This "Knyght of Ingelond, that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in manye diverse contreis, to se mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and diverse shap of men, and of beistis,' and who has, it seems, been wrongfully accused of purloining his descriptions from the great Venetian Ulysses, Marco Polo, makes mention of the following among the curiosities of Cathay :

"And there growethe a manner of Fruyt, as though it were Gowrdes : and whan thei ben rype, men kutten hem a to, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in Flessche in Bon and Blode as though it were a lytylle Lomb, with outen Wolle. And men eten both the Frut and the Best; and that is a gret Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eten; alle though it were wondirfulle: but that I knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes. And natheles I told hem of als gret a Marveylle to hem that is amonges us: and that was of the Bernakes. For I tolde hem that in oure Countree weren Trees that beren a Fruyt, that becomen Briddes fleeynge: and tho that fellen in the Water lyven: and thei that fallen on the Erthe dyen anon: and thei ben right gode to Mannes mete. And here of had thei als gret Marvayle that sume of hem trowed it were an impossible thing to be."

I have given in the plate accompanying this article a facsimile (fig. 1) of the woodcut which illustrates this tale, as it possesses some interest when compared with the figure (see opposite page) reproduced from Gerarde's "Herball."

Let us now turn our attention for a while to the not less wonderful, though possibly less romantic, history told to us by hard facts.

The Barnacles proper and their allies, the Acorn-shells, which have been classed together by zoologists under the term "Cirripedia," from the cirri, or curls of hair, in which their feet terminate, may be divided provisionally, and conveniently for purposes of description, into the Pedunculated and Sessile groups. Though the former are also in a sense sessile, in that they are fastened, when adult, to other bodies which may be

*

either fixed or movable, they are nevertheless to be distinguished from the latter group by having their main body hanging from a stalk, pedicle, or peduncle, of varying length, which permits of some degree of motion, while the body of the sessile kinds is directly fixed to its support by a firm and often broad base.* Both kinds must be fairly familiar even to the most ordinary sea-side visitor; the pedunculated, in the shape of the pink clusters, like locks of a Medusa's hair, which, clinging to a worm-eaten fragment of wreck, or to the cork float of a fisherman's seine, he sees thrown upon the shore after a storm; while the sessile varieties, as little, short, coarsely truncated, clustered cones—not limpets-try the tenderness of his feet when he takes his bathe from the rocks.

As regards geographical distribution, these animals extend all over the world; those, of course, attached to floating objects having the widest range. These excepted, the majority inhabit the warmer temperate and tropical seas. Of those attached to fixed objects, or to littoral animals, rarely more than three or four species are found in the same locality. Of the pedunculated kinds, the fixed Lepadida-to which family the common ship-barnacle belongs—are attached mostly to organic bodies, some being deeply embedded in the skin of the shark (Anelasma squalicola) or of whales (Coronula balonaris), while others fasten upon turtles, sponges, various molluscs, or inhabit the gill-cavities of Crustaceans (as Dichelaspis in a Palinurus).

I have before me, as I write, some specimens of Spirula shells, and of the lovely lilac Ianthina, which floats in midocean, buoyed up by its egg-raft, to which certain Lepadidæ are adhering; also of a crab from China waters (fig. 4), on either side of whose carapace Conchoderma Hunteri has effected a lodgment.† With regard to the geographical range of sessile Cirripedes, they are found in every sea, from lat. 74° 18' North to Cape Horn; but their distribution is much affected by locality, as they do not live upon coral reefs, or where shores and sea bottoms are muddy, sandy, or are formed of shifting shingle.

With regard to fossil Cirripedia, geologists have had much difficulty in identifying specimens, because the shell-valves of the same species are rarely co-embedded, since the membrane

* A parallel nomenclature will at once occur to the botanist as applied to the two varieties of oak which inhabit this country.

†These specimens, presented to the University Museum, Oxford, by Robert Garner, Esq., F.L.S., were kindly lent to me by my former teacher, Professor Rolleston, F.R.S.

holding the various divisions of the valve together decays very easily. The oldest known (pedunculated) Cirripede is a Pollicipes, found in the Stonesfield slate-Lower Oolite-but the Lepadida were not at their culminant point until during the deposition of the great Cretaceous system, at which time there were three genera, and at least thirty-two species of this group.* No true sessile Cirripede has been found in any secondary formation.† This group first makes its appearance in Eocene deposits, and is found subsequently, often abundantly, in the later Tertiary formations. The present, however, is the epoch of the Balanidæ, for "these Cirripedes," as Darwin remarks, now abound so under every zone, all over the world, that the present period will hereafter apparently have as good a claim to be called the age of Cirripedes, as the Paleozoic period has to be called the age of Trilobites."

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As mythology has almost crowded out commonplace natural history, there remains but scanty space at our disposal for the barest resumé of the anatomy of the Cirripedia.

Let us take a common ship-barnacle (Lepas) as a type. Here we notice a flesh-coloured, translucent, wrinkled stem, possibly more than a foot long, attached maybe to wood or cork, and from this stem there dangles a triangular pearly shell-fish, the valves of which, bordered with the most lovely orange, from time to time open and disclose several pairs of curling feelers. The animal, in fact, bears no distant resemblance to a siphonate mollusc (see The Anatomy of the River Mussel, POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW, July 1870), which has altered its mode of life, and, careless of the stoppage of its ventilating flues, has settled down at the wrong end. Such superficial resemblance did not fail to mislead even men such as Linnæus, Cuvier, and the classical malacologist, Poli, all of whom classed this animal among the Mollusca. Each valve of the shell will be seen superficially to be made up of two unequal, irregularly triangular parts, the larger of which, lying nearest to the stem, or peduncle, is termed scutum, while the other, occupying the free apex of the valve, is known by the name of tergum. There remains a single unpaired sill, to which these twin

Aptychus (or Trigonellites) of D'Orbigny, apart from structural differences, is not a Cirripede. It existed at the Carboniferous period—" a period vastly anterior to the oldest known Pollicipes."

†The form Verruca (Cretaceous), which must be ranked as a distinct family of equal value with Balanide and Lepadidæ, is not a real exception. "On the contrary, it harmonises with the law that there is some relation between serial affinities of animals and their first appearance on this earth."