Its corpses strew alike both street and sea.
There hoary Thetis and the Nereids
Swim shudd’ring through the waves, while floating wide
The fish replete on human bodies——. Such,
Ravenna, was the Monster which foretold
Thy fall, which brings thee now such bitter woe,
Tho’ boasting in thy image triumph-crowned.
The Barnacle Goose.
Of all extraordinary beliefs, that in the Barnacle Goose, which obtained credence from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, is as wonderful as any. The then accepted fact that the Barnacle Goose was generated on trees, and dropped alive in the water, dates back a hundred years before Gerald de Barri. Otherwise Giraldus Cambrensis wrote in 1187, about these birds, the following being a translation:—
“There are here many birds which are called Bernacæ, which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese, but