Barnacle

“ Finding a suitable spot, the little animal stands on its head. Then a kind of glue is formed, which fixes it for life to that place, head down. The two shells and the two eyes are now thrown off. The Barnacle quickly builds up a shelly house, and, after a life of adventure and change, becomes a fixed Barnacle for the rest of its days.
For many years people knew little of this strange animal. All its wonderful changes, and the way its body is made, tell us plainly that the Barnacle is actually first cousin to the Crab, Lobster, Shrimp and Prawn! ”

“ Indeed, on remembering that there still survives, or till lately survived, the popular belief that barnacle-geese arise from barnacles—on learning that, even in the early transactions of the Royal Society, there is a paper describing a barnacle as showing faint traces of the young bird it is about to produce—it will be seen that only by advanced science has there been discriminated the natural organic transformations, from transformations which to ignorance seem just as likely. ”

“ Viewed from above, it was not unlike the back of some prodigious sea monster rising above the surface of the water. In shape it resembled a vast creature of the barnacle kind, the apex of whose shell would represent the highest point of the Rock, and the corrugations stand for the ridges and hollows of the sides from the highest point of the ledge to the lower ones.
The colour, too, was not unlike that of a barnacle. For, although the people had given it the name of the Black Rock, it was black only by comparison with the cliffs. ”

“ The Barnacle is always upside down in its home, and its twelve feathery legs are thrust out of the door at the top. They make a fine net, in which minute animals are caught and brought into the mouth below. This funny creature actually kicks its food into its mouth! If you own a magnifying glass, you can see this for yourself at the seaside.
You will not be able to see the mouth, however, which is inside the shell. It is fitted with moving parts, and feelers, like the mouth of a crab. Also, the Barnacle has a good set of teeth to grind its food. It has no real eyes, having no use for them. ”

“ It is true that in some respects the adult barnacle may be regarded as lower than the young, and therefore as a degenerate being. Thus, it is lower when eyes, feelers, and movements are taken into account. In other respects the adult may be considered of higher organization than the larva. These higher traits we may logically enough suppose represent the special advances which adult barnacle-life has made on its own account. But, on the whole, degradation and retrogression, if not so fully exemplified as in the sacculina, is still plainly enough illustrated in barnacle history. ”

“ The general tendency throughout nature—the evolution from a lower to a higher order, from the simple to the complex—appears in the case of the barnacle to be reversed. Gifted in the initial stage of its existence with all the functions of a free-swimming animal, and possessing organs which ultimately become rudimentary, the final phase in which all power of volition is lost, certainly does not appear one of progression. ”

“ Barnacle, bär′na-kl, n. a shellfish which adheres to rocks and the bottoms of ships: a companion who sticks closely.—n. Bar′nacle-goose, a species of wild goose belonging to the Northern seas, so called from a notion that they were produced from the barnacles mentioned. [O. Fr. bernaque—Low L. bernaca; by some referred to a supposed form pernacula, dim. of perna, a kind of shellfish; by others to a Celtic origin.] ”

“ The stem barnacles have long, flesh-like stems which move and sway with the motion of the water. They look much like a little, queer, pale plum hung by a thick stem.
The end of the barnacle, which clings to the stone, log, shell, or fish on which it has fastened itself, is the head end. The two feelers, which all these animals have, are turned into two fine tubes, or pipes. These feelers have little glands or sacs which make a strong cement. Cement is like glue, but much more strong and stiff. ”

“ Of what use are eyes to an animal standing on its head in a small dark shell! Now and then it casts its coat (like the Crab and Shrimp) . The old coat is rolled up and thrown away outside the door.
Now comes the strangest thing of all. As a baby, the Barnacle is a free swimming creature. It has three pairs of legs, a tail, a useful mouth, and one eye. After kicking about in the sea for some time, and changing its skin, it changes its shape entirely. It now looks more like a tiny mussel. It has two little "shells," two eyes, legs, and feelers. ”

“ The goose-necked barnacle, with its five valves, comes in its myriads attached to derelict coco-nuts, floating logs, and pumice-stone. The species owes its name to the fabulous belief that it was the preliminary state of the barnacle goose of the Arctic regions, the filaments representing the plumage and the valves the wings. It has been found on shells, whales, turtles, and marine snakes.
In the mud close to the edge of the beach sand one of the most singular of marine animals exists, and often its empty, horny, flexible, semi-transparent shell, always tinted green, may be found. ”

“ Some people think barnacles resemble crabs more than they do fishes; they go through changes, and while young possess no shells. After they have grown to be of some size, they leave the parent barnacles, and swim off, to start colonies elsewhere. The larva has twelve legs or arms, large compound eyes, and suckers enabling it to cling firmly. When of full growth, the barnacle's grip is so strong that it is very difficult to pull it from its hold. Some of the South American barnacles are sought after as a delicacy, having the flavour of a nice crab. ”

“ The young Barnacle when just extruded from the shell of its parent is a very different being from that which it will be in its mature condition. It begins its life in a form exactly like that of an entomostracous crustacean, and, like a Cyclops, has one large eye in the middle of its forehead. ”

“ These barnacles which you find by the shore are small things, you can hold several of them in your hand at once. Far down in the ocean lives a huge giant barnacle, so big that some of you could hardly lift him. ”

“ Barnacle.—A family of marine crustaceous animals enveloped by a mantle and shell, composed of five principal valves and several smaller pieces, joined together by a membrane attached to their circumference. They are furnished with a long, flexible, fleshy stalk, provided with muscles, by which they attach themselves to ships’ bottoms, submerged timber, etc. They feed on small marine animals, brought within their reach by the water and secured by their tentacula. Some of the larger species are edible. ”

“ Nobody has ever seen the nest or egg of the barnacle; nor is this marvelous, inasmuch as it is without parents, and is spontaneously generated in the following manner: When, at a certain time, an old ship, a plank, or a pine mast rots in the sea, something like fungus at first breaks out thereupon, which at length puts on the manifest form of birds. Afterward, these are clothed with feathers, and at last become living and flying fowl. ”

“ These barnacles are frequently mistaken by the casual observer for young limpets, whereas, unlike the limpet, which moves freely from place to place in quest of vegetable diet, the moment the young barnacle settles to erect his limey habitation, he possesses a fixity of tenure which terminates only with his existence. ”

“ This barnacle-goose tree was a great article of faith with our ancestors in the Middle Ages. Gerarde, for example, in his History of Plants gives an illustration of it in all good faith—a branch bearing barnacles and by its side a barnacle goose. Following, however, the plan we have adopted throughout of going directly to the fountain-head, Gerarde shall give us his own description of this wonder of Nature. We may, however, point out before doing so that the error arose from a near resemblance of two distinct words suggesting that there must be an identity of nature in the things so named. ”

“ He says the people there boil and eat the stem, which is first of a mouse-colour, and afterwards becomes red like our prawns. There are many heads, that arise out of one stem, each of which consists of two shells, in which are the same parts of the animal as in the other species. This I have called the Cornucopia Barnacle. Some of the shells of this Barnacle were drawn from a specimen in the British Museum. This Lepas is the Mitella of Linnæus. ”

“ It is a very handsome species, a vegetable-feeder, and excellent eating." Now, it would seem to be a very simple matter to end the story by saying that it was long believed that barnacle-geese had their origin in the barnacle-shells we have just referred to, but the case is more complex; the shells bearing the geese were believed to grow on trees. This belief, that the barnacle-shell is transformed into the barnacle-goose, was well established, as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and was referred to and contradicted by both Albertus Magnus and by Roger Bacon. ”

“ They is barnacles in the making. When they catch fast to the bottom of a ship with their little blue threads of trailing anchor lines they petrify into shell and that is how barnacles grow.”
I marveled that the little inch high jelly ships could ever turn into the curse of seamen—barnacles! There was a fleet of thousands of them before my eyes.
“As long as they keep moving they is all right, but they are like some cussed folks ashore who, when they stick on to someone else, turn into a damned nuisance,” Stitches concluded. ”

“ The upper [36] figures represent the Nauplius stage of animals closely resembling the Barnacle: the lower figures show the transformation of the Nauplius into the young Barnacle. Its organs of touch and of sight atrophy, its legs lose their locomotor function, and are simply used for bringing floating particles to the orifice of the stomach; so that an eminent naturalist has compared one of these animals to a man standing on his head and kicking his food into his mouth.
Fig. 9.—Adult Barnacle or Lepas (one of the Cirrhipedes) . Natural size. ”

“ The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird; and these shell-fish bearing, as seen out of the water, resemblance to the goose's neck, were ignorantly, and without investigation, confounded with geese themselves. In France, the barnacle goose may be eaten on fast-days, by virtue of this old belief in its fishy origin. From a passage in the Memoirs of Lady Fanshaw, it appears that Sir Kenelm Digby, at the table of the Governor of Calais, declared that barnacles, a bird in Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and from that, sticking upon old wood, became in time a goose! ”

“ Originally, the name was given to the stalked barnacles (Lepadidae of C. Darwin) , which attach themselves in great numbers to drift-wood and other objects floating in the sea and are one of the chief agents in the fouling of ships’ bottoms during long voyages. The sessile barnacles (Balanidae of Darwin) or “acorn-shells” are found in myriads, encrusting the rocks between tide-marks on all coasts. ”

“ For which God's name be euer honored and praised." It is to be remarked that Gerard's description of the goose-progeny of the barnacle tree exactly corresponds with the appearance of the bird known to ornithologists as the "barnacle-goose"; and there can be no doubt that, skilled as was this author in the natural history lore of his day, there was no other feeling in his mind than that of firm belief in and pious wonder at the curious relations between the shells and their fowl-offspring. Gerard thus attributes the origin of the latter to the barnacles. ”

“ The narrow cavities between the branched laminæ are the places where the ligaments or tendons, that move the opercula, are inserted.
Fig. 8. is the Cup Barnacle, taken off an East India ship from Sumatra. The testaceous flat bottom of this was marked with the seams and lines of the sheathing, and with the rust of the nails. In one of these shells the animal is represented protruding his claws thro’ the opercula.
Fig. 9. is called the Bell-shaped Barnacle. ”

“ Barnacles.
"Barnacles" (by Sidney Lanier, 1842-81) is a poem that I teach in connection with my lessons on natural history. We have a good specimen of a barnacle, and the children see them on the shells on the coast. The ethical point is invaluable. ”

“ The goose barnacles, Anatifa, have a flexible peduncle. The Balanoidea, or sea acorns, like oysters, are rooted to the spot on which they rest in their infant days; without the power, like the goose barnacle, of swaying to and fro like a pendulum, be their resting-place what it may. ”

“ The barnacles present several unusual conditions with regard to the internal organs. They have no heart nor any blood-vessels; most of the species are hermaphroditic; and there are other indications of a degenerate condition. This degeneration of the barnacles is due to their fixed life, the results of which are like those of a parasitic life. The young barnacles when hatched from the egg are free-swimming larvæ as with the other Crustacea. They finally attach themselves and undergo the changes, some of them of degenerative nature, which produce the body-structure of the adult. ”