Gerard's "Herbal" was reprinted forty years later (in 1636) and edited by Johnson, a member of the Society of Apothecaries. He writes with contempt of Gerard's credulity as to the story of the barnacle and the goose, and states that certain "Hollanders" in seeking a north-east passage to China had recently come across some islands in the Arctic Sea which were the breeding-place of the so-called barnacle goose, and had taken and eaten sixty of their eggs, besides young and old birds.
Probably there were always lovers of the marvellous and the occult who favoured and would favour to-day the tradition of the conversion of one animal into another and such wonders; and there were also both in the days of ancient Greece and Rome, and even in the darkest of the Middle Ages, men with a sceptical and inquiring spirit, who accepted no traditional testimony, but demanded, as the basis of their admitting something unlikely as nevertheless true, the trial of experiment and the examination of specimens. What has happened since Gerard's time and the incorporation of the Royal Society in 1662, is that the sceptical men have got the upper hand, though not without much opposition. In this country, owing to the defective education administered in our public schools and older universities, there is still quite a large number of well-to-do people ready to believe in any "occult" imposture or fantasy that may be skilfully brought to their notice.
On the other hand, we must bear in mind when we consider these strange beliefs held by really learned and intelligent men in the past, that the investigation of nature had not advanced very far in their time. It was not held, as it is to-day, as an established fact that living things are generated only by slips or cuttings of a parent or from eggs or germs which are special detached particles of the parent. It was held to be a matter of common observation and certainty that all sorts of living things are "spontaneously generated" by slime, by sea foam, by mud, and by decomposing dead bodies of animals and trees. It was also held, in consequence of a blind belief in, and often a complete misunderstanding of, the legends and fairy tales of the ancients and of the preposterous "Bestiaries" and books on magic which were the fashion in mediaeval times, that it is quite a usual and natural thing for one animal or plant to change into another. Hence there was nothing very surprising (though worthy of record) in a barnacle changing into a young goose, or in the buds of a tree becoming in some conditions changed into barnacles!
So, too, the notion that rotting timber can "generate" barnacles was not, to our forefathers, at all out of the way or preposterous. Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 was unable to make up his mind on this matter, and believed in the spontaneous generation of mice by wheat, to which he briefly alludes in his curious book called "Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or an Enquiry into Vulgar and Common Errors." The account of the creation given by the poet Milton was based upon the belief in the daily occurrence of such spontaneous generation of living things of high complexity of structure and large size, from slime and mud. The process of creation of living things conceived by him was but a general and initial exhibition of an activity of earth and sea which in his belief was still in daily operation in remote and undisturbed localities.
In 1668 the Italian naturalist, Redi, demonstrated that putrefying flesh does not "spontaneously breed" maggots. He showed that if a piece of flesh is protected by a wire network cover from the access of flies, no maggots appear in it, and that the flies attracted by the smell of the meat lay their eggs on the wire network, unable to reach the meat, whilst if the wire cover is removed they lay their eggs on the meat, and from them the maggots are hatched. It took a long time for this demonstration by Redi to affect popular belief, and there are still country folk who believe in the spontaneous generation of maggots.[4]
[4] See the chapter, "Primitive Beliefs about Fatherless Progeny," in "Science from an Easy Chair," Second Series.
But few, if any, persons of ordinary intelligence or education now believe that these sudden productions of living things, without regular and known parentage, take place. The spontaneous generation of large, tangible creatures having ceased to be an article of general belief, the conviction nevertheless persisted for some time that at any rate minute microscopic living things were generated without parentage. This theory was more difficult to test on account of the need for employing the microscope in the inquiry, which was not brought to a high state of efficiency until the last century. By experiments similar to those of Redi, it was shown in the first half of last century by Theodor Schwann that even the minute bacteria do not appear in putrescible material when those already in it are killed by boiling that material, and when the subsequent access to it of other bacteria is prevented by closing all possible entrance of air-borne particles, or insect carriers of germs. It took another fifty years to thoroughly establish by observation and experiment the truth of Schwann's refutation of the supposed "spontaneous generation" of the minutest forms of life.
As an example of the strange incapacity for making correct observation and the failure to record correctly things observed which are frequently exhibited by the most highly placed "men of education," as well as by uneducated peasants and fisher folk, we have the short paper entitled, "A Relation concerning Barnacles," by Sir Robert Moray—the first president of the Royal Society of London (from 1661 until its incorporation in 1662)—a very distinguished man, and an intimate friend of King Charles II. This paper was read to the society in 1661 and published in 1677 in vol. xii. of the "Philosophical Transactions." Sir Robert relates how he found on the coast a quantity of dead barnacles attached to a piece of timber, and that in each barnacle's shell was a bird. He writes: "This bird in every shell that I opened, as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and completely formed that there appeared nothing wanting, as to the external parts, for making up a perfect sea-fowl; 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 near. The little bill like that of a goose, the eyes marked, the head, neck, breast, wings, tail and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish coloured, and the feet like those of other waterfowl—to my best remembrance. All being dead and dry, I did not look after the inward parts of them." If the reader will now look at Fig. 15, C, which represents the soft parts of a barnacle when the shells of one side are removed, he will see how far Sir Robert Moray must have been the victim—as so many people naturally are under such circumstances—of imagination and defective memory when he wrote this account. I have put into italics in the above quotation from his "Relation" his confession that he is writing, not with his specimens before him, but from remembrance of them. Moreover, he tells us, with admirable candour, that the specimens were dead and dry when he examined them! One could not desire a better justification for the motto adopted by the Royal Society, "Nullius in verba," and for the procedure upon which in its early days the Society insisted—namely, that at its meetings the members should "bring in" a specimen or an experiment, and not occupy time by mere relations and reports of marvels. It is necessary even at the present day to insist on such demonstration by those who urge us to accept as true their relations of mysterious experiences with ghosts, and their "conviction" that they have conversed with "discarnate intelligences."