10 THE SEA-SIDE AND AQUARIUM. 



clear and brittle, of a white colour, tinged with pale 

 blue."* 



In our previous cursory reference to the wonderful 

 transformations undergone by the Barnacle tribe, the 

 reader would understand that these assertions rest 

 upon the evidence of modern naturalists.t Now, al- 

 though many of these have devoted much study and 

 patient labour to the subject, who can be so bold as to 

 declare that, in a few years, others may not bring for- 

 ward explanatory hypotheses of quite an opposite cha- 

 racter? For seeing is not always believing, in matters 

 connected with natural history, at least according to 

 some statements we read of among old authors. Were 

 it so, we should now believe that these same Barnacles 

 were the young of the Solan Goose ! a bird that 

 haunts in vast numbers the Bass Rock, and other 

 localities. Nay more, a common belief in different 

 parts of Scotland, and over the West of England, was, 

 that the shells grew upon certain trees, and, in pro- 

 gress of time, opened of themselves. Whereupon a 

 certain animated substance contained within the shell 

 dropped down, and according to the place where it 

 fell it perished or fructified. By falling into water it 

 grew to be a fowl, but by falling upon land the vital 

 principle became extinct. The fowls which resulted 

 from the more fortunate contingency, were called Bar- 

 nacle Geese in Scotland, and Brant or Tree Geese in 

 England. The error which this imagined transfor- 



* Miss Pratt's " Things of the Sea-coast." 

 t See Appendix, Note 1. 



