CIRRIPEDES OR BARNACLES. 389 



CHAPTER XL1L 



CIRRIPEDES OR BARNACLES. 



* So slow Bootes underneath him sees, 

 In the Icy Isles, those Goslins hatch'd of Trees : 

 Whose fruitful Leaves falling- into the Water 

 Are tum'd, they say, to living Fowls soon after : 

 So rotten Sides of broken Ships do change 

 To Barnacles : Transformation strange ! 

 "Twas first a green Tree, then a gallant Hull, 

 Lately a Mushrum, then a flying Gull." 



" And from the most refined of Saints 

 As naturally grow miscreants, 

 As Barnacles turn Soland Geese, 

 In the Islands of the Orcades." 



THE account of the Barnacle given by the sage 

 Gerrard is a rich specimen of the natural history of 

 the sixteenth century. Here it is : 



" But what our eyes have seen and our hands have 

 touched we shall declare. There is a small island in 

 Lancashire called the ' Pile of Foulders' wherein are 

 found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, 

 some whereof have been cast thither by shipwracke, 

 and also the trunks and bodies with the branches of 

 old and rotten trees cast up there likewise, whereon 

 is found a certaine spume or froth that in time 



