But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities unless he periodicallyonce a year, at the leastcleared his vessel's bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which gather so rapidly in the tropical seas.

The notion of the barnacle being considered a fish is, I am aware, one that still prevails on the western coast of Ireland; for I remember a friend of mine, who had spent a few weeks in Kerry, telling me of the astonishment he experienced upon seeing pious Roman Catholics eating barnacles on Fridays, and being assured that they were nothing else than fishes!

He entered for the purpose of careening his little vessels in order to remove the barnacles and accumulated weed-growth.

Some of these lumps resemble a large barnacle; both lumps and points are covered with long, coarse grass, and thus concealed, become a great hindrance to the pedestrian, who is constantly wounded by them.

Clearly, we should be grateful to an editor who feels it his chief duty to scrape away these barnacles from the brave old hull, to replace with the original heart-of-oak the planks where these small but patient terebrators have bored away the tough fibre to fill the gap with sawdust!