Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/109

 —in its native waters, we shall observe a beautiful little series of feathery plumes to wave backward and forward, and ever and anon to be quickly withdrawn into the secure recesses of the shell. These organs are the modified feet of the animal, which not only serve for sweeping food-particles into the mouth, but act also as breathing organs. We may, therefore, find it a curious study to inquire through what extraordinary transformation and confusion of ideas such an animal could be credited with giving origin to a veritable goose; and the investigation of the subject will afford a singularly apt illustration of the ready manner in which the fable of one year or period becomes transmitted and transformed into the secure and firm belief of the next.

We may begin our investigation by inquiring into some of the opinions which were entertained on this subject and ventilated by certain old writers. Between 1154 and 1189 Giraldus Cambrensis, in a work entitled "Topograpbia Hiberniæ," written in Latin, remarks concerning "many birds which are called Bernaceæ: against nature, nature produces them in a most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese, but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterward they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the timber, surrounded by shells, in order to grow more freely." Giraldus is here evidently describing the barnacles themselves. He continues: "Having thus, in process of time, been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air. They derive their food and growth from the sap of the wood or the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently, with my own eyes, seen more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the seashore from one piece of timber, inclosed in shells, and already formed." Here, again, our author is speaking of the barnacles themselves, with which he naturally confuses the geese, since he presumes the crustaceans are simply geese in an undeveloped state. He further informs his readers that, owing to their presumably marine origin, "bishops and clergymen in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh, nor born of flesh," although, for certain other and theological reasons, Giraldus disputes the legality of this practice of the Hibernian clerics.

In the year 1527 appeared "The Hystory and Croniclis of Scotland, with the cosmography and dyscription thairof, compilit be the noble Clerk Maister Hector Boece, Channon of Aberdene." Boece's "History" was written in Latin, the title we have just quoted being that of the English version of the work (1540), which title further sets forth that Boece's work was "Translatit laitly in our. vulgar and commoun langage be Maister Johne Bellenden, Archedene of Murray, And Imprentit in Edinburgh, be me Thomas Davidson, prenter to the