Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14433

    Barnacles in Scotland

    Date
    8 March 1661
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p20
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 368mm
    width (page): 231mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > barnacle
    Description
    A figure of a barnacle observed by Robert Moray on the shores of the Isle of Berneray, showing that the shell had some cross sutures dividing it into five parts which were fastened to each other. Moray's account was read to the meeting of the Royal Society on 6 March 1661, and entered into the Register Book on 8 March 1661. It was printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 12, no. 137 (January and February 1678).

    This figure is copied from RBO/1/015. There is another version at Cl.P/15i/1/001 and another copy at MS/776/017.
    Transcription
    The shells hung very thick and close by one another, and were of different sizes, of the colour and consistence of musshells, and the sides or joints of them, joined with such a kind of film, as Mussels are, which serves them for a Hinge to move upon, when they open and shut. The figure of the Barnacle shell, is here coursely represented on the Margin. It is thin about the Edges, and about half as thick as broad.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 6 March 1661, ‘Sir Robert Moray having given in, probably this day, his relation concerning the bernacles [sic], it was registered on the 8th of March’ (Birch 1:18).

    Printed as fig. 3 in Robert Moray, ‘A relation concerning barnacles’, Phil. Trans. vol. 12, no. 137 (January and February 1678), pp. 925-27.
    Related fellows
    Robert Moray (1608 - 1673, British) , Natural philosopher
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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