CHAPTER XXIV. 



Cirripedia (Barnacles). 



Whoever is familiar with the rocky coasts of our sea-girt 

 isle, is aware that that belt of rock which is included be- 

 tween the levels of high and low tide, is ordinarily studded 

 with millions of little shelly cones, often packed so closely 

 together, that there is not proper standing room for them, 

 so that the individual cones are forced out of their proper 

 shape, and compelled to rise into a lengthened distorted 

 form. 



He may chance, moreover, to have seen a log of timber 

 drifted in from the wide ocean, or the bottom of a ship 

 just returned from a twelvemonth's tropical voyage, either 

 of which has probably displayed numbers of singular beings, 

 which he may be disposed to associate with the Bivalve 

 Mollusca that he finds on the sandy beach. For they con- 

 sist of a flattened shell, composed of many pieces, usually 

 of a blueish- white hue, marked with orange, but set at 

 the end of a more or less lengthened stem of a wrinkled 

 gristly substance, by which it is firmly attached to the sub- 

 merged timber. 



Now the stony cone seated on the rock, and the delicate 

 multivalve swinging at the end of the long footstalk, are 

 members of the same class — they are both Barnacles. In 



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