CHAPTER IV 



CRUSTACEA (CONTINUED} : CIRRIPEDIA PHENOMENA OF GROWTH 



AND SEX OSTRACODA 



Order III. Cirripedia. 



THE Cirripedes are medium-sized Crustacea, with the body consist- 

 ing of few segments, and enveloped in a mantle formed as a fold 

 of the external integument, which may be strongly protected by 

 calcined plates. The abdomen is greatly reduced. The larva, 

 after hatching out as a Nauplius, and passing through a Cypris 

 stage, when it resembles an Ostracod, fixes itself to a foreign 

 object by means of the first antennae, and becomes a pupa, which 

 after profound changes gives rise to the adult. 



All the Cirripedes, when adult, live either a fixed or parasitic 

 existence, and as so frequently happens with animals of this 

 kind, they have departed widely from the ordinary structure 

 of the class to which they belong. Their anomalous appearance 

 and the mystery surrounding their propagation gave rise, 

 probably, to the old legend that the Barnacles (Lepadidae), 

 which live attached to pieces of ilonting timber hatched out 

 into Barnacle geese 1 ; and even so late as 1678, in the 1,'oyal 



1 Max Miillcr (Science of Language, % Jnd scries, p. f)3-l) gives references i<> > 

 7iuinl>:T <if old authors who vouch lor tin: truth of this legend, going hack as far as 



( liraldii^ I 'amhivnsis in tin- twelfth century. The legend appears to 1 f Scutch or 



Irish origin, (liraldus complains of the clergy in Ireland eating I'.arnacli- geese 

 at the time of fasting under the pretext that the\ are not th->h, hni horn ul h-li 

 living in the sea. The form of the legend varies, ceriain authoi alleging thai, ihe 

 geese an- produced from the fruits of a tree which drop into t he water, others 1 hat 

 they grow in shells (Barnacles) attached to lloating logs. Aldrovandii^ /' Ji-ilmx, 

 T. Hi., 1003, p. 174) ingeniously combines hoth versions in a woodcut representing 

 undoubted Barnacles growing on a tree with luxuriant foliage at the \\ater's edge, 

 helow which a number of lihcratud geese arc swimming. Miiller ascribes an etymo- 



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