Darwin did extensive work on barnacles, and wrote to his cousin WD Fox in 1852:
I am at work on the second vol. of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired: I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.
But in 1855, he felt nostalgia for them, and wrote to Fox:
all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it, & just at present I wish I had the old Barnacles to work at & nothing new
I grew up on the northeast coast of the US. All the boats that sat for even a couple of weeks at a time would get covered in barnacles. Fuck barnacles, right?
I live by the northwest coast now. All of the boats that sit for a couple of weeks get covered in mussels. Fuck mussels, am I right? (And you can't even eat them because of where they're growing!)
