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The picture represents a group of stalked barnacles those shrimps fixed by their antennae, which modern science, I believe, calls Lepas anatifera; by the side of these stands a little goose, and the suggestion of course is that the latter has slipped out of the former, although the draughtsman has been far too conscientious to represent the occurrence.
To-day as I was opening a specimen of Lepas anatifera in order to compare the animal with the description in Darwin's 'Monograph on the Subclass Cirripedia, I found in the shell of this Cirripede, a blood-red Annelide, with a short, flat body, about half an inch long and two lines in breadth, with twenty-five body-segments, and without projecting setigerous tubercles or jointed cirri.
The Barnacle goose or clakis of Willoughby, anas erythropus of Linnaeus, called likewise tree-goose, anciently supposed to be generated from drift wood, or rather from the lepas anatifera or multivalve shell, called barnacle, which is often found on the bottoms of ships. See Pennant's Brit. Zool. 4to. 1776. V. II. 488, and Vol.
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