The bordes and rotten plankes whereon are found these shels breeding the Barnakle, are taken vp in a small Island adioyning to Lancashire, halfe a mile from the main land, called the Pile of Foulders.
¶ The Time.
They spawn as it were in March and Aprill; the Geese are formed in May and June, and come to fulnesse of feathers in the moneth after.
And thus hauing through God's assistance discoursed somewhat at large of Grasses, Herbes, Shrubs, Trees, and Mosses, and certaine Excrescenses of the Earth, with other things moe, incident to the historie thereof, we conclude and end our present Volume, with this wonder of England. For the which God's name be euer honored and praised.
Gerard was probably a good botanist and herbalist; but Thomas Johnson, the editor of a subsequent issue of his book, tells us that
"He, out of a propense good will to the publique advancement of this knowledge, endeavoured to performe therein more than he could well accomplish, which was partly through want of sufficient learning; but," he adds, "let none blame him for these defects, seeing he was neither wanting in pains nor good will to performe what hee intended: and there are none so simple but know that heavie burthens are with most paines vndergone by the weakest men; and although there are many faults in the worke, yet iudge well of the Author; for, as a late writer well saith:—'To err and to be deceived is human, and he must seek solitude who wishes to live only with the perfect.'"
It is difficult to comply with the request to think well of one who, writing as an authority, deliberately promulgated, with an affectation of piety, that which he must have known to be untrue, and who was, moreover, a shameless plagiarist; for Gerard's ponderous book is little more than a translation of Dodonæus, whole chapters having been taken verbatim from that comparatively unread author without acknowledgment.
After this series of erroneous observations, self-delusion, and ignorant credulity, it is refreshing to turn to the pages of the two little thick quarto volumes of Gaspar Schott.[ [93] ] This learned Jesuit made himself acquainted with everything that had been written on the subject, and besides the authors I have referred to, quotes and compares the statements of Majolus, Abrahamus Ortelius, Hieronymus Cardanus, Eusebius, Nierembergius, Deusingius, Odoricus, Gerhardus de Vera, Ferdinand of Cordova, and many others. He then gives, firmly and clearly, his own opinion that the assertion that birds in Britain spring from the fruit or leaves of trees, or from wood, or from fungus, or from shells, is without foundation, and that neither reason, experience, nor authority tend to confirm it. He concedes that worms may be bred in rotting timber, and even that they may be of a kind that fly away on arriving at maturity (referring probably to caterpillars being developed into moths), but that birds should be thus generated, he says, is simply the repetition of a vulgar error, for not one of the authors whom he has examined has seen what they all affirm; nor are they able to bring forward a single eye-witness of it. He asks how it can be possible that animals so large and so highly-organised as these birds can grow from puny animalcules generated in putrid wood. He further declares that these British geese are hatched from eggs like other geese, which he considers proved by the testimony of Albertus Magnus, Gerhardus de Vera, and of Dutch seamen, who, in 1569, gave their written declaration that they had personally seen these birds sitting on their eggs, and hatching them, on the coasts of Nova Zembla.
In marked and disgraceful contrast with this careful and philosophical investigation and its author's just deductions from it, is 'A Relation concerning Barnacles by Sir Robert Moray, lately one of His Majesty's Council for the Kingdom of Scotland,' read before the Royal Society, and published in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' No. 137, January and February, 1677-8.