Connections: Crab, Barnacle, Charles Darwin

Summer arrived yesterday, but sadly it had departed by this morning. However, a walk along the beach, in the haar (sea-fog), revealed a good selection of beasts that had fallen from their perches to be washed ashore by the last tide.

This crab must have died some time ago as its carapace had been colonised by a host of barnacles. They, in turn, have now also met their demise having been washed onto dry-land. There they will provide a snack for some passing gull. When it in turn dies it may well be eaten by a crab. Such is the inevitable cycle of life.

The barnacles provide me with a reason to link to a back-blip from our recent holidays. The link is to Down House, the home of Charles Darwin, who spent many years working on the classification and structure of barnacles. As Richard Owen said, 'No naturalist has devoted more painstaking attention to the structure of the barnacles than Mr Darwin'. What a man of parts!