also used in ancient times in the ceremony of baptism, and they are called baptismal basins, by some foreign writers.  This use is well illustrated by the very curious early Flemish painting in the Antwerp Gallery, representing the seven sacraments.  The acolyte, standing near the font, bears such a dish, and a napkin.  The proper use of these latten dishes was, as I believe, to serve as a laver, carried round at the close of the banquet in old times, as now at civic festivities.  They often bear devices of a sacred character; but it is probable that they were only occasionally used for any scared purpose, and are more properly to be regarded as part of the domestic appliances of former times.

ALBERT WAY.

* * * * *

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 Topographia Hiberniae first gave the account of the barnacle, and of that account the writers referred to by Brand were manifestly but the copyists.

The passage referring to “the barnacle” will be found in the Topog.  Hiber. lib. i. e. xi.  I annex a translation of it, as it may be considered interesting, when compared with the passages quoted in Brand:—­

“There are,” says Giraldus, “in this country (Ireland) a great number of birds called barnacles (Bernacre), and which nature produces in a manner that is contrary to the laws of nature.  The birds are not unlike to ducks, but they are somewhat smaller in size.  They make their first appearance as drops of gum upon the branches of firs that are immersed in running waters; and then they are next seen hanging like sea-weed from the wood, becoming encased in shells, which at last assume in their growth the outward form of birds, and so hang on by their beaks until they are completely covered with feathers within their shells, and when they arrive at maturity, they either drop into the waters, or take their flight at once into the air.  Thus from the juice of this tree, combined with the water, are they generated and receive their nutriment until they are formed and fledged. I have many times with my own eyes seen several thousand of minute little bodies of these birds attached to pieces of wood immersed in the sea, encased in their shells, and already formed. These then are birds that never lay eggs, and are never hatched from eggs; and the consequence is, that in some parts of Ireland,