BARNACLE GEESE GOOSE BARNACLES. 313 



It is unnecessary for me to describe more minutely the 

 anatomy of the Cirripedes ; I have said enough to show 

 the nature of the plumose appurtenances which, hanging 

 from the dead shells, were supposed to be the feathers of a 

 little bird within ; but it is difficult to understand how any 

 one could have seen in the natural occupant of the shell 

 "the little bill, like that of a goose, the eyes, head, neck, 

 breast, wings, tail, and feet, like those of other water-fowl," 

 so precisely and categorically detailed by Sir Robert 

 Moray. As Pontoppidan, who denounced the whole story, 

 as being "without the least foundation," very truly says, 

 " One must take the force of imagination to help to make 

 it look so !" 



As to the origin of this myth, I venture to differ from 



tudinally, apparently by the struggles of its inmate, which escapes at 

 one end, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and swims freely 

 to the surface of the water, leaving the split cocoon or case at the 

 bottom of the pan. Some few of the young barnacles seem to be 

 freed from the cocoon before, or at the moment of, extrusion. From 

 three to a dozen or more of these escape with each protrusion of the 

 cirri of the parent, and as the parturient barnacle will put forth its 

 feathery casting net at least twenty times in a minute for an hour or 

 more, it follows that as many as ten thousand young ones may be pro- 

 duced in an hour. These, as they are cast forth at each pulsation of 

 the parent's cirri, fall upon the clean sheet of glass, and may be taken 

 up in a pipette, and placed under a microscope, or removed to a 

 smaller vessel of sea- water, for minute and separate investigation. It 

 seems strange that animals which, like the oyster and the barnacles, 

 are condemned in their mature condition to lead so sedentary a life, 

 should in the earlier stages of their existence swim freely and merrily 

 through the water young fellows seeking a home, and when they 

 have found it, although their connubial life must be a very tame one, 

 settling down, and not caring to rove about any more for the remainder 

 of their days. These young Balani dart about like so many water- 

 fleas, and yet, after a few days of freedom, they become fixed and 

 immovable, the inhabitants of the pyramidal shells which grow in 

 such abundance on other shells, stones, and old wood. 



