GOOSE-BE ARIN& LEPAS. 251 



exigencies of their condition. The manner in 

 which the little inhabitant of the acorn-shell 

 extends its organs, by which it breathes as well as 

 obtains food, may be easily observed. Let our 

 visitor of the beach carry home with him a shell or 

 piece of stone to which some of them are attached, 

 and in depositing it in sea-water the balani will 

 be seen in a few minutes expanding their appa- 

 ratus, and gently moving it in the still water. 



In the same class with those now referred to 

 are the Barnacles. One of these, which is called 

 Pentelasmis anatifera, is very common in some 

 parts of the southern coasts of England and 

 Ireland, where it is found in great numbers 

 attached to drift wood. The bottoms of ships 

 are sometimes covered with them. The shell of 

 this cirripod is whitish, flattened at the sides, and 

 opening down the edges by a slit. It is composed 

 of five distinct pieces, united together by a mem- 

 brane, and the whole is attached to a flexible stalk 

 several inches in length, of a fleshy or rather 

 tendinous character. The feathered apparatus 

 or cirri, by which, like the acorn-shell already 

 described, the animal breathes, have been sup- 

 posed to.be the rudimentary feathers of a future 

 bird to be excluded from the shell when arrived 

 at a sufficient state of maturity. 



This popular error is of considerable antiquity, 

 and still prevails in many of those ' parts of the 

 sea-coast in which the barnacle is found. Gerard, 

 a naturalist who flourished at the close of the 

 sixteenth century, and whose authority in his 



