BARNACLE GEESE— GOOSE BARNACLES. iii 



Describing "a cut of a large Firr-tree of about two and 

 a half feet diameter, and nine or ten feet long," which he 

 saw on the shore in the Western Islands of Scotland, and 

 which had become so dry that many of the Barnacle shells 

 with which it had been covered had been rubbed off, he 

 says : — - 



" Only on the parts that lay next the ground there still hung 

 multitudes of little Shells, having within them little Birds, perfectly 



FIG. 36. — DEVELOPMENT OF BARNACLES INTO GEESE. After Aldrovandus. 



shap'd, supposed to be Barnacles. The Shells hung very thick and 

 close one by another, and were of different sizes. Of the colour and 

 consistence of Muscle-Shells, and the sides and joynts of them joyned 

 with such a kind of film as Muscle-Shells are, which serves them for a 

 Hing to move upon, when they open and shut. . . . The Shells hang at 

 the Tree by a Neck longer than the Shell, of a kind of Filmy 

 substance, round, and hollow, and creased, not unlike the Wind-pipe 

 of a chicken, spreading out broadest where it is fastened to the Tree, 

 from which it seems to draw and convey the matter which serves for 



