This Fruit Grows On A Plant
Which Does Not Rise Above Eighteen Inches Or Two Feet Above The Ground.
At their coming home, the keels and bottoms of the ships were strangely
overgrown with certain shells, two inches or more in length, as thick as
they could stand, and so large that a man might put his thumb into their
mouths.
It is affirmed that a certain slimy substance grows in these
shells, which falls afterwards into the sea, and is changed into the
bird called barnacles[223]. Similar shells have been seen on ships
coming from Ireland, but these Irish barnacles do not exceed half an
inch long. I saw the Primrose in dock, after her return from Guinea,
having her bottom entirely covered over with these shells, which in my
judgment must have greatly impeded her sailing. Their ships also were in
many places eaten into by the worms called _Bromas_ or _Bissas_, which
are mentioned in the Decades[224]. These worms creep between the planks,
which they eat through in many places.
[Footnote 223: This is an old fable not worth confuting. 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. IV. 64. - E.]
[Footnote 224: Meaning the Decades of Peter Martyr, part of which book
was translated and published by Richard Eden.
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