28 REMARKABLE TRANSFORMATION. 



are thrown off as useless coverings, the arms and oars 

 become ciliated organs, and the eyes gradually dis- 

 appear ; in the meantime the form and character of 

 the adult animal are assumed. The fixed conical shell 

 of the balanus, with its curious lid, becomes deve- 

 loped, and forms at once a prison and a retreat. In 

 the barnacle, the five shelly valves are produced ; and 

 the long stem emerges, by which the animal is perma- 

 nently attached to the rock, on which it hangs by this 

 living cable. Thus, then, in this animal does a won- 

 derful transformation take place, by which it loses some 

 organs, and has others modified, so that were it not 

 known in both stages of existence, and proved by ex- 

 perience to be identically the same being, the young 

 and the perfect animals might be regarded, as indeed 

 they have been, as totally unallied to each other. Mr. 

 Thompson at first considered the young fry of the 

 balanus to be crustaceous animals, and it was by obser- 

 vation only that he discovered the truth. 



The name of anatifa^ sometimes given to these crea- 

 tures, is an abbreviation of anatifera, and owes its origin 

 to a strange fable. As it was believed some analogy 

 existed between the most extended species of the anatifa 

 and the numerous wild-geese or bernacles which abound 

 on the maritime shores of the west and north of Europe, 



