SCIENCE 
IS 
KNOWLEDGE. 
KNOWLEDGE 
IS 
POWER. 
A FRACIICAL JOURNAL FOR AMATEURS. 
Copyright Secured, 1878. 
Vol. I. 
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER, 1878. 
No. 1 1 . 
A Curious Experience with Acorn Bar* 
nacles. 
OW often it hap- 
pens that Just when 
we think we have 
made ourselves ac- 
quainted with the 
habits of some gro- 
tesque little crea- 
ture, it will turn 
and play us an un- 
expected prank, 
and often after 
years of delightful 
study of our aqua- 
ria, we discover some strange development 
in animal or vegetable life which sets at 
naught our keenest scrutiny, and upsets all 
our previous conclusions. 
Not the least novel of my experiences was 
the finding, at Maspeth bridge, which spans 
an arm of Newtown Creek, thousands of 
full-grown acorn barnacles {Balanus halan- 
cides) attached to strips of oilcloth. The 
latter were waste pieces from an oilcloth 
factory; they had been thrown into the 
creek and had become entangled amongst 
timbers and rocks. The strips were en- 
crusted on both sides with barnacles so 
thickly in places that the oilcloth was not 
visible. Eager to secure a good quantity 
of these little creatures, so strangely fas- 
tened, I took away some twenty yards for 
my own and friends' tanks, and decorated 
one of my largest tanks in festoons. The 
effect, however, was neither natural nor 
pleasing; I therefore determined to detach 
them, and if possible invent a means of 
fastening them to some of the numerous 
rocks contained in the tank. The oilcloth 
was waterlogged and partially decayed, so 
that the barnacles came off readily. I made 
a cement of two-thirds beeswax, nearly one- 
third resin, and the rest Canada balsam. I 
then selected some of the flattest stones 
and slightly warmed them in an oven. I 
then placed small lumps of the cement on 
the warm stones, and pressed the barnacles 
on the warm cement, causing them to ad- 
here with great firmness; the barnacles 
having been previously well dried in the 
open air (they can be kept with safety in 
the open air forty-eight hours). Parts of 
the cement were visible here and there, and 
were unsightly: to cover this defect I at- 
tached pieces of serpula, and dead bucoi- 
nums, and small pyrulas. 
