smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells, and already formed. The eggs are not impregnated in coitu, like those of other birds, nor does the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds, on fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent, although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating flesh.”
We see here, that Giraldus speaks of these barnacles being developed on wreckage in the sea, but does not mention their growing upon trees, which was the commoner belief. I have quoted both Sir John Maundeville, and Odoricus, about the lamb-tree, which neither seem to consider very wonderful, for Sir John says: “Neverthelesse I sayd to them that I held yt for no marvayle, for I sayd that in my countrey are trees yt beare fruit, yt become byrds flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and
that that falleth on earth, dyeth, and they marvailed much thereat.” And the Friar, in continuation of his story of the Borometz, says: “Even as I my selfe have heard reported that there stand certaine trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea, bearing fruit like unto a gourd, which at a certaine time of the yeere doe fall into the water, and become birds called Bernacles, and this is most true.”
Olaus Magnus, in speaking of the breeding of Ducks in Scotland, says: “Moreover, another Scotch Historian, who diligently sets down the secret of things, saith that in the Orcades, (the Orkneys) Ducks breed of a certain
Fruit falling in the Sea; and these shortly after, get wings, and fly to the tame or wild ducks.” And, whilst discoursing on Geese, he affirms that “some breed from Trees, as I said of Scotland Ducks in the former Chapter.” Sebastian Müenster, from whom I have taken the preceding illustration, says in his Cosmographia Universalis:—“In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit, conglomerated of their leaves; and this fruit, when, in due time, it falls into the water beneath it, is endowed with new life, and is converted into a living bird, which they call the ‘tree goose.’ This tree grows in the Island of Pomonia, which is not far from Scotland, towards the North. Several old Cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention the tree, and it must not be regarded as fictitious, as some new writers suppose.”
In Camden’s “Britannia” (translated by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London) he says, speaking of Buchan:—“It is hardly worth while to mention the clayks, a sort of geese; which are believed by some, (with great admiration) to grow upon the trees on this coast and in other places, and, when they are ripe, to fall down into the sea; because neither their nests nor eggs can anywhere be found. But they who saw the ship, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, when it was laid up in the river Thames, could testify, that little birds breed in the old rotten keels of ships; since a great number of such, without life and feathers, stuck close to the outside of the keel of that ship; yet I should think, that the generation of these birds was not from the logs of wood, but from the sea, termed by the poets ‘the parent of all things.’”
In “Purchas, his Pilgrimage,” is the voyage of Gerat de Veer to China, &c., in 1569—and he speaks of the
Barnacle goose thus:—“Those geese were of a perfit red colour, such as come to Holland about Weiringen, and every yeere are there taken in abundance, but till this time, it was never knowne where they hatcht their egges, so that some men have taken upon them to write that they sit upon trees in Scotland, that hang over the water, and such eggs that fall from them downe into the water, become young geese, and swim there out of the water: but those that fall upon the land, burst asunder, and are lost; but that is now found to be contrary, that