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ened varlets who fled at the sight of Bottom with the ass's head to "wild-geese that the creeping fowler eye."Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. Sc. 2.

"They flock together in consent, like so many wildgeese."-Henry IV. Part II. Act v. Sc. I.

And Marcius, addressing the retreating Romans before Corioli, reproaches them as having no more courage than

geese :

"You souls of geese,

That bear the shapes of men, how have you run
From slaves that apes would beat!"

Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 4.

The Fool in King Lear reminds us of the old proverb— "Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way." King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 4.

It is not surprising that, to so common a bird, numerous allusions should be made in the Plays of Shakespeare, and, in addition to the passages quoted in Chapter VII.,* many others might here be mentioned, were it not that the repetition might prove tedious.

It was anciently believed that the Bernacle Goose (Anser bernicla) was generated from the Bernacle or Barnacle (Lepas anatifera). Shakespeare has alluded to the metamorphosis in the following line :

"And all be turned to barnacles."

See ante, p. 197.

Tempest, Act iv. Sc. I.

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It is strange that in matters concerning the marvellous, even men of education will take pains to deceive themselves, and, instead of investigating nature with a "learned spirit," give a license to ill-directed imagination, and credit absurdities. When such men are so credulous, how can we wonder at the superstitions of the illiterate?

The first phase of the story in question is, that certain trees, resembling willows, more particularly in one of the Orkneys, Pomona, produced at the ends of their branches small swelled balls, containing the embryo of a goose suspended by the bill, which, when ripe, fell off into the sea and took wing.

So long ago as the twelfth century, the story was pro

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mulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis, in his "Topographia Hiberniæ," and Munster, Saxo Grammaticus, Scaliger, Fulgosus, Bishop Leslie, and Olaus Magnus, all attested to

the truth of this monstrous absurdity. Gesner, too, and Aldrovandus* may be also cited.

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THE BARNACLE GOOSE TREE. From Aldrovandus.

A second phase or modification of the story is that given by Boëce, the oldest Scottish historian: he denies that the geese (Scotticè, Claiks) grow on trees by their bills, as some believe, but that, as his own researches and personal experience prove, they are first produced in the form of worms, in the substance of old trees or timber floating in the sea; for such a tree, cast on shore in 1480, was brought to the laird, who ordered it to be sawn asunder, when there appeared a multitude of worms, "throwing themselves out of sundry holes and bores of

* Aldrovandi Opera Omina: Ornithologia. 3 vols. Bononiæ. 1599.

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the tree; some of them were rude, as they were newshapen; some had both head, feet, and wings, but they had no feathers; some of them were perfect-shapen fowls. At last the people, having this tree each day in more admiration, brought it to the kirk of St. Andrew's, beside the town of Tyre, where it yet remains to our days." Other instances he adduces by way of proof, and at length he comes to the conclusion, that the production of these geese from fruits is the erroneous opinion of the ignorant; it being ascertained that "they are produced only by the nature of the ocean sea, which is the cause and production of many wonderful things."

In this view he was supported by Turner and others: When," says Turner, "at a certain time an old ship, or a plank, or a pine-mast rots in the sea, something like a little fungus at first makes its appearance, which at length puts on the manifest form of birds; afterwards these are clothed with feathers, and at last become living and flying fowl." ("Avium Præcip. Hist.," Art. “ANSER.") Turner, however, does not give up the goose-tree, but informs Gesner that it is a different bird from the brent or bernicle goose, which takes its origin from it. (Gesner, "De Avibus,” iii. p. 107.) Passing a host of other authorities, with their accumulated proofs, and the depositions of unimpeachable witnesses, we may come to Gerard, who, in 1597, published the following account in his "Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes "

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"There is a small island in Lancashire, called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwracke, and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches, of old and rotten trees, cast up there likewise; whereon is found a certaine spume, or froth, that in time breedeth unto certaine shels, in shape like those of the muskle, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour, wherein is contained a thing in forme like a lace of silke,

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finely woven as it were together, of a whitish colour; one ende whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even

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