102 Barnacles. [ February, 
habitat, and possess a greater degree of vitality or ability to live 
without food than related forms in what may be considered more 
favorable regions, and through and by reason of their long sleep 
or hibernation (more properly exstivation), with its inactivity 
and consequent immunity from any waste or exhaustion of vital 
strength, are enabled to maintain their hold upon life when ani- 
mals more highly organized would inevitably perish ; and we are 
furnished with an illustration in the instances cited, how nature 
works compensatively, when we institute a comparison with the 
opposite condition of activity, and the food required to sustain it. 
BARNACLES. 
BY J. S. KINGSLEY. 
UAINT old Gerarde in his Herball, or Generall Historie of 
Plantes, says, on page 1391, “ We are arrived to the end of 
our historie, thinking it not impertinent to the conclusion of the 
same, to end with one of the marvels of this land (we may say 
of the world)..... There are founde in the north parts of 
Scotland, and the islands adjacent, called Orchades, certaine 
trees whereon doe growe certaine shell fishes, of a white colour, 
tending to russet, wherein are contained little living creatures ; 
which shels, in time of maturitie, doe open, and out of them 
growe those little living things which falling into the water doe 
become fowles, whom we call Barnakles, in the North of En- 
gland Brant Geese, and in Lancashire Tree Geese : but the other 
that doe fall upon the land perish and come to nothing.” He 
then goes on to describe in detail the various transformations by 
which the barnacle is changed into a goose, saying, “ But what 
our eies have seene and hands have touched, we shall declare.” 
He tells us that when the bird is formed in the shell, the latter 
gapes, the legs hang out, the bird grows larger, until at length it 
hangs only by the bill and soon after drops into the water, 
“ where it gathereth feathers and groweth to a fowle bigger than 
a mallard and lesser than a goose.” 
A quotation in Walton’s Complete Angler repeats the same 
curious notion : — 
“ So slow Bodtes underneath him sees 
In th’ icy islands goslings hatched of trees, 
Whose fruitful leaves falling into water 
Are turned tis known to living fowls soon after. 
