120 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



transformed barnacle was a popular one in Shakespear's 

 time, whether believed or disbelieved, appears from his 

 reference to barnacles in " The Tempest." Caliban says 

 to Stephano and Trinculo, when they have all three 

 been plagued by Prospero's magic, and plunged by Ariel 

 into " the filthy mantled pool " near at hand, " dancing 

 up to their chins " : " We shall lose our time and all be 

 turned to barnacles, or to apes with foreheads villainous 

 low." Probably enough, this is an allusion to the 

 supposed Protean nature of barnacles. They are not 

 alluded to elsewhere in Shakespear. 



One of the most precise accounts of the generation of 

 geese by barnacles is that of the mediaeval historian 

 Giraldus Cambrensis, who visited Ireland and wrote an 

 account of what he saw in the time of Henry II, at the 

 end of the twelfth century. He says : " There are in 

 this place many birds which are called Bernacae ; 

 Nature produces them, against Nature, in a most 

 extraordinary way. They are like marsh-geese, but 

 somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber 

 tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. After- 

 wards they hang down by their beaks as if they were a 

 seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by 

 shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in 

 process of time been clothed with a strong coat of 

 feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away 

 into the air." " I have frequently seen," he proceeds, 

 " with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these 

 small bodies of birds, hanging down on the seashore from 

 a piece of timber, enclosed in their shells and ready 

 formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other 

 birds ; nor do they ever hatch any eggs nor build nests 

 anywhere. Hence bishops and clergymen in some parts 

 of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the 



