114 Beautiful Shells. 
serve the purpose of a casting-net, to seize and 
drag to the mouth of the animal its prey, which 
consists of small mollusks and crustacea. 
This is the Barnacle about which such strange 
stories are told by old writers, who affirmed that 
the Barnacle or Brent Goose, that in winter visits 
our shores, is produced from these fleshy foot-stalks 
and hairy shells by a natural process of growth, 
or, as some philosophers of our day would say, 
of development. Gerard, who, in 1597, wrote a 
* Historie of Plants,’ describes the process by 
which the fish is transformed into the bird; telling 
his readers that as ‘the shells gape, the legs hang 
out, that the bird growing bigger and bigger, the 
shells open more and more, till at length it is 
attached only by the bill, soon after which it drops 
into the sea; there it acquires feathers, and grows 
to a fowle.” There is an amusing illustration 
given in Gerard’s book, where the young Geese 
are represented hanging on the branches of trees, 
just ready to drop into the water, where a number 
of those that have previously fallen, like ripe fruit, 
and attained their full plumage, are sailing about 
very contentedly. It was part of this theory that 
the Barnacles were of vegetable origin, they grew 
upon trees, or sprung out of the ground like 
