BARNACLES. | NATURAL HISTORY. 23 
Barnacles. 
We shall lose ‘our time, 
And all be turn’d to barnacles, 
TEMPEST, iv. I, 248-50. 
I rorp them of as great a marvel to them that is 
amongst us: and that was of the Barnacles, For I told 
them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that 
become birds flying: and those that fall in the water live : 
and they that fall on the earth die anon: and they be 
right good to man’s meat. And hereof had they a great 
marvel, that some of them trowed it were an impossible 
_ thing to be. Sir Fohn Mandeville, ch. xxvi. 
In the Islands of Ireland, and Orcades, in certain places 
there, there be certain trees, much like unto willow-trees, out 
of which come forth certain little hairs, increasing by little 
and little into birds, having shape of ducks, hanging upon 
the bough by their. nebs or bills; and when they are come 
to full. perfectness, they fly away of themselves, or fall 
into the next seas, which birds we call Barnacles. This 
is related by the people that dwell there. 
Lupton’s “ Notable Things,” bk. vii. § 3. 
[Gerard in his “ Herbal” gives a description of the Barnacle or 
Goose-tree, too long to quote, but he declares that he has seen 
it, and vouches for it of his own knowledge.] 
In Man they have great store of Barnacles breeding upon 
their coasts. [He adds that he sought vainly for Barnacles 
until May, 1584, when he found many shells on ships in 
the Thames newly come home from Barbary or the Canary 
Isles, and on opening them he] saw the proportion of a fowl 
in one of them, saving that the head was not yet formed, 
because the fresh water had killed them all (as I take it). 
Certainly the feathers of the tail hang out of the shell at 
least two inches, the wings almost perfect, touching form, 
so that it cannot be denied but that some bird or other 
must proceed of this substance. 
Harrison’s “Description of Britain,” p. 38, in Holinshed. 
One little fish [Remora or Barnacle], not above half a 
foot long, is able to arrest and stay perforce, yea and hold 
as prisoners our goodly tall and proud ships. This little 
fish detained Caligula’s ship (a galliass it was, furnished 
