BARNACLES.] NATURAL HISTORY. 23 



Barnacles. 



We shall lose our time, 

 And all be turn'd to barnacles. 



TEMPEST, iv. i, 248-50. 



I TOLD them of as great a marvel to them that is 

 amongst us : and that was of the Barnacles. For I told 

 them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that 

 become birds flying : and those that fall in the water live : 

 and they that fall on the earth die anon : and they be 

 right good to man's meat. And hereof had they a great 

 marvel, that some of them trowed it were an impossible 

 thing to be. Sir John Mandeville, ch. xxvi. 



IN the Islands of Ireland, and Orcades, in certain places 

 there, there be certain trees, much like unto willow-trees, out 

 of which come forth certain little hairs, increasing by little 

 and little into birds, having shape of ducks, hanging upon 

 the bough by their nebs or bills ; and when they are come 

 to full perfectness, they fly away of themselves, or fall 

 into the next seas, which birds we call Barnacles. This 

 is related by the people that dwell there. 



Lupton's " Notable Things," bk. vii. 3. 



[Gerard in his u Herbal " gives a description of the Barnacle or 

 Goose-tree, too long to quote, but he declares that he has seen 

 it, and vouches for it of his own knowledge.] 



IN Man they have great store of Barnacles breeding upon 

 their coasts. [He adds that he sought vainly for Barnacles 

 until May, 1584, when he found many shells on ships in 

 the Thames newly come home from Barbary or the Canary 

 Isles, and on opening them he] saw the proportion of a fowl 

 in one of them, saving that the head was not yet formed, 

 because the fresh water had killed them all (as I take it). 

 Certainly the feathers of the tail hang out of the shell at 

 least two inches, the wings almost perfect, touching form,, 

 so that it cannot be denied but that some bird or other 

 must proceed of this substance. 



Harrison's "Description of Britain," p. 38, in Holinshed. 



foot 



ONE little fish [Remora or Barnacle], not above half a 

 t long, is able to arrest and stay perforce, yea and hold 

 as prisoners our goodly tall and proud ships. This little 

 detained Caligula's ship (a galliass it was, furnished 



fish 



