Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/110

100 Kyngis nobyll grace." In this learned work the author discredits the popular ideas regarding the origin of the geese. "Sum men belevis that thir clakis (geese) growis on treis be the nebbis (bills). Bot thair opinioun is vane. And becaus the nature and procreatioun of thir clakis is strange, we have maid na lytyll laboure and deligence to serche ye treuth and verite yairof, we have salit (sailed) throw ye seis quhare thir clakis ar bred, and I fynd be gret experience, that the nature of the seis is mair relevant caus of thair procreatioun than ony uthir thyng." According to Boece, then, "the nature of the seis" formed the chief element in the production of the geese, and our author proceeds to relate how "all treis (trees) that ar cassin in the seis be proces of tyme apperis first wormeetin (worm-eaten), and in the small boris and hollis (holes) thairof growis small worms." Our author no doubt here alludes to the ravages of the Teredo, or shipworm, which burrows into timber, and with which the barnacles themselves are thus confused. Then he continues, the "wormis" first "schaw (show) thair heid and feit, and last of all thay schaw thair plumis and wyngis. Finaly, quhen thay ar cumyn to the just mesure and quantite of geis, thay fie in the aire as othir fowlis dois, as was notably provyn, in the yeir of God ane thousand iii hundred lxxxx, in sicht of mony pepyll, besyde the castell of Petslego." On the occasion referred to, Boece tells us that a great tree was cast on shore and was divided, by order of the "lard" of the ground, by means of a saw. Wonderful to relate, the tree was found not merely to be riddled with a "multitude of wormis," throwing themselves out of the holes of the tree, but some of the "wormis" had "baith heid, feit and wyngis," but, adds the author, "thay had no fedderis (feathers)."

Unquestionably either the scientific use of the imagination had operated in this instance in inducing the observers to believe that in this tree, riddled by the ship-worms, and possibly having barnacles attached to it, they beheld young geese; or Boece had construed the appearances described as those representing the embryo-stages of the barnacle-geese.

Boece further relates how a ship named the Christofir was brought to Leith, and was broken down because her timbers had grown old and failing. In these timbers were beheld the same "wormeetin" appearances, "all the hollis thairof" being "full of geis." Boece again most emphatically rejects the idea that the "geis" were produced from the wood of which the timbers were composed, and once more proclaims his belief that the "nature of the seis resolvit in geis" may be accepted as the true and final explanation of their origin. A certain "Maister Alexander Galloway" had apparently strolled with the historian along the seacoast, the former giving "his mynd with maist ernist besynes to serche the verite of this obscure and mysty dowtis." Lifting up a piece of tangle, they beheld the sea-weed to be hanging full of mussel-shells from the root to the branches. Maister Galloway