BARNACLES

In Brand's *Popular Antiquities*, vol. iii. pp. 361, 362., there is an account given of *the barnacle*, "a well-known kind of shell-fish, which is found sticking on the bottoms of ships," and with regard to which the author observes, that "it seems hardly credible in this enlightened age, that so gross an error in natural history should so long have prevailed," as that this shell-fish should become changed into "a species of goose." The author then quotes Holinshed, Hall, Virgidemiarum, Marston, and Gerard; but he does not make the slightest reference to Giraldus Cambrensis, who is his *Topogr…