CRUSTACEA. 



133 



The influence of the myth went even farther; for since the barna- 

 cle-geese were developed from barnacles, they could not be flesh, but 

 were rather fish, and hence they could be eaten during Lent. This 

 view was long held by both priests and the laity for five hundred years. 

 The story was often contradicted, but still it lived and spread. iEneas 

 Sylvius, afterward Pope Pius II., when on a visit to King James encpiired 

 anxiously for the barnacle-tree, " and complains, somewhat petulantly, 

 that miracles will always flee farther and farther ; for that when he came 

 to Scotland to see' the tree, he was told that it grew further north in 

 the Orcades." 



It would appear that the myth also took another shape in the far East, 

 though its origin has not yet been pointed out. Sir John Maundeville, 

 " Knyght of Ingelond, that was y borne in the toun of Seynt Albans, and 

 travelide aboute in the worlde in manye diverse countreis, to se mervailes 

 and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and diverse shap of 

 men, and of beistis," in the first half of the fourteenth century tells what 

 he saw in Cathay : — 



" And there growethe a manner of Fruyt, as thoughe it were Gowrdes : 

 and when thei ben ripe, men kutten hem a to, and men fynden with inne 

 a lytylle Best, in Flessche in Bon and Blode as thoughe it were a lytylle 

 Lomb, with outen Wolle. And men eten both the Frut and the Best ; 

 and that is a gret marveylle. Of that Frute I have eten ; alle thoughe it 

 were wondirf ulle : but that I 

 knowe wel that God is marveyl- 

 lous in his Workes." Maunde- 

 ville also gives a figure, which 

 we reproduce here after Professor 

 Gait on's copy. 



The barnacles differ consid- 

 erably in appearance. In one 

 group the calcareous shells are 

 directly attached to rock or pile ; 

 in the other, there is a long flex- 

 ible fleshy stalk which intervenes 

 between the body and the point 

 of attachment. The former are 

 known as acorn-barnacles, and 

 are the most familiar examples 

 of the group. On all the shores 

 of the North Atlantic Ocean, both European and American, occurs the 

 species figured in the adjacent cut. Almost every rock and pile, between 



Fig. 120. — The Barnacle Myth, as given in Chapter 

 xxvi. of Sir John Mauudeville's ' Voiage.' 



