214 



CIRRIPEDIA. 



PART III. 



Six pairs of long, slender, curly feet rise from the throat 

 of the animal, and bend over the prominent mouth, which 

 is placed at the bottom of a kind of 

 funnel, formed by the divergence 

 of these six pairs of thoracic feet. 

 It is furnished with a broad upper 

 lip, two palpi, and three pairs of 

 jaws, of which the outermost are 

 horny and toothed, the innermost 

 soft and fleshy. Each foot is di- 

 vided into two similar many- 

 jointed branches : the shortest 

 pair is nearest to the mouth, the 

 others increase gradually in length 

 and number of joints to the most 

 distant (fig. 154). Mr. Gosse 

 estimated that, in a specimen he 

 possessed, the whole apparatus 

 rig. 154. Tentacles or feet of included nearly five hundred dis- 



the Balanus. J 



tinct articulations. Since each 



joint is moved by its own system of muscles, the per- 

 fection of the mechanism may be conceived. But it is 

 as sensitive as flexible, for every separate joint is fur- 

 nished with a system of spinous hairs, which are no 

 doubt organs of touch, since the whole of the branches 

 are supplied with nerves. These hairs, which extend 

 at somewhat wide angles from the axis of the curling 

 filaments, are barbed, for they have numerous projec- 

 tions, or shoulders, surrounded by whorls of micro- 

 scopic hairs. 4 



This beautiful and complicated structure is the fishing 

 apparatus of the animal, which it is continually pushing 

 out and drawing in through the valved lid of the shell. 

 When the whole is thrown out it is widely spread, and 



1 Evenings at the Microscope,' by Mr. Gosse. 



