The collection of Cirripedes in the United States National Museum contains material derived from many sources. The most extensive series was received from the United States Bureau of Fisheries, and is due to the work of the steamers Albatross and Fish Hawk over twenty-five years or more in both the Atlantic and Pacific waters.

This text gives an overview of almost all aspects of barnacle biology covering advances made since Charles Darwin to the present day.

J. Herbert Waite Like many graduate students before and after me I was There are so many species about which nothing is known, mesmerized by a proposition expressed years earlier by and the curse of not knowing is apathy. Krogh (1929) – namely that “for many problems there is Bioadhesion is the adaptation featured in this book, an animal on which it can be most conveniently studied”. and biology has many adhesive practitioners. Indeed, This opinion became known as the August Krogh Prin- every living organism is adhesively assembled in the ciple and remains much discussed to this day, particu- most exquisite way. Clearly, speci? c adhesion needs to larly among comparative physiologists (Krebs, 1975). be distinguished from the opportunistic variety. I think The words “problems” and “animal” are key because of speci? c adhesion as the adhesion between cells in the they highlight the two fundamental and complementary same tissue, whereas opportunistic adhesion might be the foci of biological research: (1) expertise about an animal adhesion between pathogenic microbes and the urinary (zoo-centric), which is mostly observational and (2) a tract, or between a slug and the garden path. If oppor- mechanistic analysis of some problem in the animal’s life nistic bioadhesion is our theme, then there are still many history or physiology (problem-centric), which is usually practitioners but the subset is somewhat more select than a hypothesis-driven investigation. before.

Tells the story of the part played by Darwin's eight-year study of barnacles and how the examination of this tiny marine organism contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.