Describing "a cut of a large Firr-tree of about two and a half feet diameter, and nine or ten feet long," which he saw on the shore in the Western Islands of Scotland, and which had become so dry that many of the Barnacle shells with which it had been covered had been rubbed off, he says:—
"Only on the parts that lay next the ground there still hung multitudes of little Shells, having within them little Birds, perfectly shap'd, supposed to be Barnacles. The Shells hung very thick and close one by another, and were of different sizes. Of the colour and consistence of Muscle-Shells, and the sides and joynts of them joyned with such a kind of film as Muscle-Shells are, which serves them for a Hing to move upon, when they open and shut.... The Shells hang at the Tree by a Neck longer than the Shell, of a kind of Filmy substance, round, and hollow, and creased, not unlike the Wind-pipe of a chicken, spreading out broadest where it is fastened to the Tree, from which it seems to draw and convey the matter which serves for the growth and vegetation of the Shell and the little Bird within it. This Bird in every Shell that I opened, as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and compleatly formed, that there appeared nothing wanting as to internal parts, for making up a perfect Seafowl: every little part appearing so distinctly that the whole looked like a large Bird seen through a concave or diminishing glass, colour and feature being everywhere so clear and neat. The little Bill, like that of a Goose; the eyes marked; the Head, Neck, Breast, Wings, Tail, and Feet formed, the Feathers everywhere perfectly shap'd, and blackish coloured; and the Feet like those of other Water-fowl, to my best remembrance. All being dead and dry, I did not look after the internal parts of them. Nor did I ever see any of the little Birds alive, nor met with anybody that did. Only some credible persons have assured me they have seen some as big as their fist."
It seems almost incredible that little more than two hundred years ago this twaddle should not only have been laid before the highest representatives of science in the land, but that it should have been printed in their "Transactions" for the further delusion of posterity.
Ray, in his edition of Willughby's Ornithology, published in the same year as the above, contradicted the fallacy as strongly as Gaspar Schott; and (except that he incidentally admits the possibility of spontaneous generation in some of the lower animals, as insects and frogs) in language so similar that I think he must have had Schott's work before him when he wrote.
Aldrovandus[ [94] ] tells us that an Irish priest, named Octavianus, assured him with an oath on the Gospels that he had seen and handled the geese in their embryo condition; and he adds that he "would rather err with the majority than seem to pass censure on so many eminent writers who have believed the story."
In 1629 Count Maier (Michaelus Meyerus—these old authors when writing in Latin, latinized their names also) published a monograph 'On the Tree-bird'[ [95] ] in which he explains the process of its birth, and states that he opened a hundred of the goose-bearing shells and found the rudiments of the bird fully formed.
So slow Bootes underneath him sees,
In th' icy isles, those goslings hatched on trees,
Whose fruitful leaves, falling into the water,
Are turned, they say, to living fowls soon after;
So rotten sides of broken ships do change,
To barnacles, O, transformation strange!
'Twas first a green tree; then a gallant hull;
Lately a mushroom; then a flying gull.[ [96] ]
Now, let us turn from fiction to facts.
