CIRRIPEDES. 73 



The oviduct has some resemblance to that of the 

 Phalaiigiiims. It is thought in short, that Nature to form 

 the Cirripedes, has borrowed different sorts of organs from 

 the animals of several Classes." 



The Zoologists of our own country who have devoted 

 a share of their attention to these animals, have also consi- 

 dered the Cirripedes as constituting a distinct Class. 

 IVPLeay in his Horce Entoinologiccc, thinks, and not without 

 reason, that the Lepades (Pentelasmus) shew the greatest 

 affinity with the Ostracoda (Daphinia) of the Crustacea 

 (p. 307) but what appears extraordinary he seems to ima- 

 gine that the Balani belong to a different Class (p. 309) and 

 that there exists an affinity between the shell of these and 

 that of the Echini or Sea-eggs (p. 313), and sanctions the 

 opinion of Latreille that their articulated cirri have their 

 analogue in the arms of other genera of the Radiata, and 

 particularly Comatula ! (p. 315). 



These quotations while they clearly shew the distraction 

 which these animals have caused to the most intelliirent 

 observers, make manifest the high importance we should 

 attach to the discovery of their real nature, the key of 

 which has hitherto remained concealed in their Metamor- 

 phosis, without a knowledge of which they must have re- 

 mained as an enigma incapable of any satisfactory solution. 



From the heading of this Memoir, some readers aware of 

 all that has been already written on the subject of these 

 animals, might suspect a revival of the old and vulgar 

 fable of their being the young or embryo state of the wild- 

 geese which teem over the northern regions of Europe and 

 America; and although this would be a prodigy quite incom- 

 patible with the laws of Nature, as Dr. Tancred Robinson 

 has long ago shown, (Philos. Trans, abridged, Vol. 2 

 p.850.) we shall find the Cirripedes, as I have before stated, 

 really to undergo a metamorphosis scarcely less wonderful, 

 and hitherto without parallel in the whole range of nature, 

 and one which clearly shews that Classical characters, 



