CHAPTER IV 



CRUSTACEA {CONTINUED) : CIRRIPEDIA PHENOMENA OF GROWTH 



AND SEX OSTRACODA 



Order III. Cirripedia. 



The Cirripedes are medium-sized Crustacea, with the body consist- 

 ing of few segments, and enveloped in a mantle formed as a fold 

 of the external integument, which may be strongly protected by 

 calcified plates. The abdomen is greatly reduced. The larva, 

 after hatching out as a Nauplius, and passing through a Cypris 

 stage, when it resembles an Ostracod, fixes itself to a foreign 

 object by means of the first antennae, and becomes a pupa, which 

 after profound changes gives rise to the adult. 



All the Cirripedes, when adult, live either a fixed or parasitic 

 existence, and as so frequently happens with animals of this 

 kind, they have departed widely from the ordinary structure 

 of the class to which they belong. Their anomalous appearance 

 and the mystery surrounding their propagation gave rise, 

 probably, to the old legend that the Barnacles (Lepadidae), 

 which live attached to pieces of floating timber hatched out 

 into Barnacle geese ^; and even so late as 1678, in the Eoyal 



^ Max Miiller {Science of Language, 2n(i series, p. 534) gives references to a 

 number of old authors who vouch for the truth of this legend, going back as far as 

 Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century. The legend appears to be of Scotch or 

 Irish origin. Giraldus complains of the clergy in Ireland eating Barnacle geese 

 at the time of fasting under the pretext that they are not flesh, but born of fish 

 living in the sea. The form of the legend varies, certain authors alleging that the 

 geese are produced from the fruits of a tree which drop into the water, others that 

 they grow in shells (Barnacles) attached to floating logs. Aldrovandus (De Avibus, 

 T. iii., 1603, p. 174) ingeniously combines both versions in a woodcut representing 

 undoubted Barnacles growing on a tree with luxuriant foliage at the water's edge, 

 below whicli a number of liberated geese are swimming. Miiller ascribes an etymo- 



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