102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bearing its geese-progeny. From the open shells, in two cases, the 

 little geese are seen protruding, while several of the f ully-fiedged fowls 

 are disporting themselves in the sea below. Gerard's concluding piece 

 of information, with its exordium, must not be omitted. "They 

 spawne," says the wise apothecary, " as it were, in March or Aprill ; 

 the Geese are found in Maie or June, and come to fulnesse of feathers 

 in the moneth after. And thus hauing, through God's assistance, dis- 

 coursed somewhat at large of Grasses, Herbes, Shrubs, Trees, Mosses, 

 and certaine excrescences of the earth, with other things moe incident 

 to the Historie thereof, we conclude and end our present volume, with 

 this woonder of England. For which God's name be euer honored 

 and praised." It is to be remarked that Gerard's description of the 

 goose-progeny of the barnacle-tree exactly corresponds with the ap- 

 pearance of the bird known to ornithologists as the " barnacle-goose," 

 while there can be no doubt that, skilled as was this author in the 

 natural - history lore of his day, there was no other feeling in his 

 mind than that of firm belief in and pious wonder at the curious 

 relations between the shells and their fowl-offspring. Gerard thus 

 attributes the origin of the latter to the barnacles. He says no- 

 thing of the "wormeetin" holes and burrows so frequently men- 

 tioned by Boece, nor would he have agreed with the latter in cred- 

 iting the "nature of the occeane see" with their production, save 

 in so far as their barnacle-parents lived and existed in the waters 

 of the ocean. 



The last account of this curious fable which we may allude to in 

 the present instance is that of Sir Robert Moray, who, in his work 

 entitled " A Relation concerning Barnacles," published in the " Philo- 

 sophical Transactions" of the Royal Society in 1677-78, gives a suc- 

 cinct account of these crustaceans and their bird-progeny. Sir Rob- 

 ert is described as " lately one of His Majesties Council for the King- 

 dom of Scotland," and we may therefore justly assume his account to 

 represent that of a cultured, observant person of his day and genera- 

 tion. The account begins by remarking that the "most ordinary 

 trees " found in the western islands of Scotland " are Firr and Ash." 

 "Being," continues Sir Robert, "in the Island of East (Uist), I saw 

 lying upon the shore a cut of a large Firr-tree of about 2| foot diam- 

 eter, and 9 or 10 foot long ; which had lain so long out of the water 

 that it was very dry : And most of the shells that had formerly cov- 

 er'd it, were worn or rubb'd off. 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." Here 

 again the description applies to the barnacles ; the " little birds " 

 they are described as containing being of course the bodies of the 

 shell-fish. 



"The Shells," continues the narrator, "hang at the Tree by a 

 Neck longer than the Shell," this " neck " being represented by the 



