BARNACLES.
(Vol. viii., p. 124.)
A Querist quoting from Porta's Natural Magic the vulgar error that "not only in Scotland, but in the river Thames, there is a kind of shell-fish which get out of their shells and grow to be ducks, or such like birds," asks, what could give rise to such an absurd belief? Your correspondent quotes from the English translation of the Magia Naturalis, A.D. 1658; but the tradition is very ancient, Porta the author having died in 1515 A.D. You still find an allusion in Hudibras to those—
"Who from the most refin'd of saints,
As naturally grow miscreants,
As barnacles turn Soland geese,
In th' islands of the Orcades."
The story has its origin in the peculiar formation of the little mollusc which inhabits the multivalve shell, the Pentalasmis anatifera, which by a fleshy peduncle attaches itself by one end to the bottoms of ships or floating timber, whilst from the other
there protrudes a bunch of curling and fringe-like cirrhi, by the agitation of which it attracts and collects its food. These cirrhi so much resemble feathers, as to have suggested the leading idea of a bird's tail: and hence the construction of the remainder of the fable, which is thus given with grave minuteness in The Herbal, or General Historie of Plants, gathered by John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie: London, 1597:
"What our eyes have seen, and our hands have touched, we shall declare. There is a small island in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwreck; and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches of old and rotten trees, cast up there likewise, whereon is found a certain spume or froth, that in time breedeth unto certain shells, in shape like those of a mussel, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour; wherein is contained a thing in form like a lace of silk finely woven as it were together, of a whitish colour; one end whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even as the fish of oysters and mussels are; the other end is made fast unto the belly of a rude mass or lump, which in time cometh to the shape and form of a bird. When it is perfectly formed, the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as our magpie, called in some places a Pie-Annet, which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose; which place aforesaid, and all those parts adjacent, do so much abound therewith, that one of the best may be bought for threepence. For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfy them by the testimony of credible witnesses."—Page 1391.
Gerarde, who is doubtless Butler's authority, says elsewhere, that "in the north parts of Scotland, and the islands called Orcades," there are certain trees whereon these tree-geese and barnacles abound.
The conversion of the fish into a bird, however fabulous, would be scarcely more astonishing than the metamorphosis which it actually undergoes—the young of the little animal having no feature to identify it with its final development. In its early stage (I quote from Carpenter's Physiology, vol. i. p. 52.) it has a form not unlike that of the crab, "possessing eyes and powers of free motion; but afterwards, becoming fixed to one spot for the remainder of its life, it loses its eyes and forms a shell, which, though composed of various pieces, has nothing in common with the jointed shell of the crab."
Though Porta wrote at Naples, the story has reference to Scotland; and the tradition is evidently northern, and local. As to Speriend's Query, What could give rise to so absurd a story? it doubtless took its origin in the similarity of the tentacles of the fish to feathers of a bird. But I would add the farther Query, whether the ready acceptance and general credence given to so obvious a fable, may not have been derived from giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the first chapter of Genesis:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly in the open firmament of heaven?"
J. Emerson Tennent.
Drayton (1613) in his Poly-olbion, iii., in connexion with the river Dee, speaks of—
"Th' anatomised fish, and fowls from planchers sprung,"
to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609., that such fowls were "barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." In the Entertaining Library, "Habits of Birds," pp. 363-379., the whole story of this extraordinary instance of ignorance in natural history is amply developed. The barnacle shells which I once saw in a sea-port, attached to a vessel just arrived from the Mediterranean, had the brilliant appearance, at a distance, of flowers in bloom[[1]]; the foot of the Lepas anatifera (Linnæus) appearing to me like the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's side: the shell had the semblance of a calyx, and the flower consisted of the fingers (tentacula) of the shell-fish, "of which twelve project in an elegant curve, and are used by it for making prey of small fish." The very ancient error was to mistake the foot of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. As to the body, non est inventus. 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, an error into which Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) did not fall, and in which Pope Pius II. proved himself infallible. Nevertheless, in France, the Barnacle Goose may be eaten on fast-days by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin.
T. J. Buckton
Footnote 1:[(return)]
See Penny Cycl., art. Cirripeda, vii. 208., reversing the woodcut.