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

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.

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.

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":

K K

"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,

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

as the fish of oisters and muskles are; the other ende is made fast unto the belly of a rude masse or lumpe, which in time cometh to the shape and forme of a bird: when it is perfectly formed the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out, and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill: in short space after, it cometh to full maturitie, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowle bigger than a mallard and lesser than a goose, having blacke legs and bill or beake, and feathers blacke and white, spotted in such manner as is our magge-pie, called in some places a pie-annet, which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose; which place aforesaide, and all those parts adjoining, do so much abound therewith, that one of the best is bought for three-pence. For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repaire unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonie of good witnesses."

Meyer, who wrote a treatise on this "bird without father or mother," states that he opened a hundred of the goose-bearing shells, and in all of them found the rudiments of the bird completely formed.

Sir Robert Murray, in an account of the barnacle published in the "Philosophical Transactions,” says that "these shells are hung at the tree by a neck, longer than