[ [89] ] 'Cosmographia Universalis,' p. 49, 1572.
[ [90] ] The original of this picture is a small wood-cut in Matthias de Lobel's 'Stirpium Historia,' published in 1870. The birds within the shells were added by Gerard. Aldrovandus, in copying it, gave leaves to the tree, as shown on [page 110].
[ [91] ] Exercit. 59, sect. 2.
[ [92] ] 'Museum,' p. 257.
[ [93] ] 'Physica Curiosa, sive Mirabilia Naturæ et Artis,' 1662, lib. ix. cap. xxii. p. 960.
[ [94] ] 'Ornithologia,' lib. xix. p. 173, ed. 1603.
[ [95] ] 'De Volucri Arborea,' 1629.
[ [96] ] Du Bartas' "Divine Week" p. 228. Joshua Sylvester's translation.
[ [97] ] If any of my readers wish to observe the development of young barnacles they may easily do so. The method I have generally adopted has been as follows: Procure a shallow glass or earthenware milk-pan that will hold at least a gallon. Fill this to within an inch of the top with sea-water, and place it in any shaded part of a room—not in front of a window. Put in the pan six or eight pebbles or clean shells of equal height, say 1½ or 2 inches, and on them lay a clean sheet of glass, which, by resting on the pebbles, is brought to within about 2½ inches of the surface of the water. Select some limpets or mussels having acorn-barnacles on them; carefully cut out the limpet or mussel, and clean nicely the interior of the shell; then place a dozen or more of these shells on the sheet of glass, and the barnacles upon them will be within convenient reach of any observation with a magnifying glass. If this be done in the month of March, the experimenter will not have to wait long before he sees young Balani ejected from the summits of some of the shells. Up to the moment of their birth each of them is enclosed in a little cocoon or case, in shape like a canary-seed, and most of them are tossed into the world whilst still enclosed in this. In a few seconds this casing is ruptured longitudinally, apparently by the struggles of its inmate, which escapes at one end, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and swims freely to the surface of the water, leaving the split cocoon or case at the bottom of the pan. Some few of the young barnacles seem to be freed from the cocoon before, or at the moment of, extrusion. From three to a dozen or more of these escape with each protrusion of the cirri of the parent, and as the parturient barnacle will put forth its feathery casting net at least twenty times in a minute for an hour or more, it follows that as many as ten thousand young ones may be produced in an hour. These, as they are cast forth at each pulsation of the parent's cirri, fall upon the clean sheet of glass, and may be taken up in a pipette, and placed under a microscope, or removed to a smaller vessel of sea-water, for minute and separate investigation. It seems strange that animals which, like the oyster and the barnacles, are condemned in their mature condition to lead so sedentary a life, should in the earlier stages of their existence swim freely and merrily through the water—young fellows seeking a home, and when they have found it, although their connubial life must be a very tame one, settling down, and not caring to rove about any more for the remainder of their days. These young Balani dart about like so many water-fleas, and yet, after a few days of freedom, they become fixed and immovable, the inhabitants of the pyramidal shells which grow in such abundance on other shells, stones, and old wood.
[ [98] ] See the quotation from Hector Boethius, p. 101.