l82 BY THE DEEP S~EA. 



fellows and becomes almost straight, spreading out its hairs 

 as widely as possible. Thus extended, the entire plume of 

 feathers sweeps through a limited space of water, and many 

 minute creatures are entangled in its hairs, and so brought 

 into the currents that flow towards the Barnacle's mouth. 



Huxley has described the Barnacle as standing on its head 

 and kicking food into its mouth ; but we question whether this 

 partakes of his usual accuracy of description. So far as we 

 have been able to make out the process, the food particles are 

 strained off from the sea-water by this exquisite net, and 

 brought, not kicked to the mouth. 



It is to this plume of feathers that the Barnacle owes its 

 specific name, anatifera = goose-bearing. It was formerly 

 thought to be a vegetable production, whose fruit, when ripe, 

 gaped open, and dropped out an embryo bird, which fell into 

 the water and developed into a Bernicle Goose. Gerarde, 

 three centuries ago, wrote a wonderful and circumstantial 

 account of the whole business, which he declared he had seen 

 with his own eyes ; and every writer of popular works on the 

 sea since then has seen fit to reproduce his account as one of 

 the curiosities of natural history. I have no intention of doing 

 so, for it is time it had a little rest after being so hard worked. 

 For a similar reason I have in this book utterly ignored 

 Montgomery's " Pelican Island ; " and the equally hackneyed 

 quotations from Southey, Crabbe, and Coleridge, that have 

 been a boon to some of my predecessors in filling their pages, 

 I have also put upon a retired list. 



Cirripedes, not being so completely boxed up as the majority 

 of crustaceans, can enlarge their dwellings by additions to the 

 edges of the shells, and therefore do not need to throw off 

 the entire envelope from time to time. But it is difficult to 

 entirely get rid of racial characteristics, even when there is no 

 special need to retain them ; and so we find the Cirripedes 

 casting the skins of their bodies from time to time, though the 

 limy shell is made to serve for all their life. 



