'Relation Concerning Bernacles' by Sir Robert Moray

Description

Also details about fir and ash trees in Western Scotland - about barnacles with figure of one in text - observations of tides off an island called Berneroy
Read to the Royal Society on 4 March 1661

Image: Ink, size width 3cm, height 6cm, by Sir Robert Moray. A Barnacle shell, described as 'it is thin about the edges and about half as thick as broad. Every one of the shells hath some crosse seames or sutures, that, as I remember, divide it into five parts, ner about the manner of those marks in the figure. Those parts are fastened to one another with such a filme, as Mussell shells are. These shells hang at the tree by a neck longer than the shell; of a kind of filmy substance, round, and hollow and cressed not unlike the wind pipe, of a chicken, spreading out broadest, where it is fastened to the tree, from which it seemes to draw and convey the matter; that serves for the growth and vegetation of the shell and the little bird within it; which in every shell that I opened as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and completely formed, tht there appeared nothing wanting, as to the externall partsl for making up a perfect se fowle; every little part appearing so distincly, that the whole looks like a large bird, seen through a concave or diminishing glass; colour and feature being every where so clear and neat; The littel Bill like that of a goose, the eyes markt, the head, neck, breast wings, taile and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shapt and blackish coloured, and the feet, like those of a water fowle, to my best remembrance.'

Reference number

RBO/1/6

Earliest possible date

8 March 1661

Page extent

4 pages

Format

Manuscript