BARNACLE, or Lepas, also called Anatifa and Pentalasmis, a kind of shell fish, a genus of eirrlwpoda (q.v.), the type of a family of articulate animals distinguished by a long flexible stalk or peduncle, which is provided with muscles, upon the summit of which, in the true barnacles, are shelly valves five in number, inelosing the principal organs of the animal, and opening and closing on one side like the opercular valves of batanus (q.v.), to admit of its spreading out and retracting its net—an apparatus similar to that by which the animals of that genus obtain their food. Barnacles abound in almost all seas, attaching themselves iu great numbers to logs of wood, ships' bottoms, etc. They grow very rapidly. Some of the species are eaten in some parts of the world, and perhaps they were among the balani which the ancient Romans esteemed a delicacy.—In some cirrhopods, very nearly allied to the true barnacles, and resembling them in general form, the shelly valves almost entirely disappear.
In former times, the B. was supposed to be the embryo of a goose or bird of some kind; a notion which doubtless arose from a fancied resemblance between the convolu tions of the fish in its shell and the embryo of a bird in the egg. It was, therefore, believed that the barnacle goose, described in next article, sprung from these marine shells. Hollinshed gravely affirms that such was the case; and the most learned men of
their time were weak enough to give credence to the absurdity. Gerard, in his Herbal (1597), declares, that after "a thing in form like a lace of silke finely woven, as it were, together"—which he correctly enough states to be " the first thing that appeareth" when "the shell gaped' open"—there next follow "the legs of the bird hanging out;" and at last the bird, increasing in size, " hanged' only by the bill," and "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," etc. All this was represented as constantly taking place on the coast of Lancashire and the Hebrides, and continental writers of greater name reported in like manner the seine fable, against which Ray and other early naturalists were obliged seriously to argue. The B., however, really under goes transformations not less wonderful than the fabled ones, which have rendered it an object of so much interest. See CIRREOPODA.