Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/133

114 like cirrhi, which are so densely covered with hairs that the minutest thing cannot pass through them. "Poor unthinking wight," remarks Gosse, "whoever he may be, Infusory, or Annelid, or Cypris, or germ of Sponge, that meets the clutch of those enclosing fingers! The bristles that pass across the interspaces, locking into each other, shut out all chance of escape; the living net is whipped in, the valves close over the orifice, and the ill-fated wretch presently finds himself in the cavernous maw of the hungry Cirrhiped." And there is an allied genus which may be found shorewards—the common Barnacle, adhering by its long flexible and contractile peduncle to pieces of timber, bottles, &c.; its shell which is milk-white, is almost flat and composed of five pieces, two of which on each side are triangular, with an elongated piece at the back; the cirrhi in them are very like. those of the Balanus, being rolled and unrolled with such rapidity that a whirlpool is formed into which minute objects are drawn and captured. This Barnacle is interesting, as having been the subject of an egregious error on the part of some of our old Naturalists, who gave it the name of Anatifera, from an idea that the Barnacle Goose (Anas erythopus-Penn.) was produced from it,—old Gerrard so mentions it in his Herbal, and figures it in all its stages from the shell to the bird. Aldrovandus too gives a quaint picture of the Barnacles hanging from a tree, and the "Goslings hatched on trees," swimming about under the shade thereof, with this superscription.

A little picturesque island next meets the eye, endeared to many from its having been chosen as a