BARNACLE GEESE—GOOSE BARNACLES. 109 



It is difficult to comply with the request to think well of 

 one who, writing as an authority, deliberately promulgated, 

 with an affectation of piety, that which he must have known 

 to be untrue, and who was, moreover, a shameless plagiarist ; 

 for Gerard's ponderous book is little more than a transla- 

 tion of Dodonoeus, whole chapters having been taken 

 verbatim from that comparatively unread author without 

 acknowledgment. 



After this series of erroneous observations, self-delusion, 

 and ignorant credulity, it is refreshing to turn to the pages 

 of the two little thick quarto volumes of Caspar Schott.* 

 This learned Jesuit made himself acquainted with every- 

 thing that had been written on the subject, and besides the 

 authors I have referred to, quotes and compares the state- 

 ments of Majolus, Abrahamus Ortelius, Hieronymus Car- 

 danus, Eusebius, Nierembergius, Deusingius, Odoricus, 

 Gerhardus de Vera, Ferdinand of Cordova, and many 

 others. He then gives, firmly and clearly, his own opinion 

 that the assertion that birds in Britain spring from the 

 fruit or leaves of trees, or from wood, or from fungus, or 

 from shells, is without foundation, and that neither reason, 

 experience, nor authority tend to confirm it. He concedes 

 that worms may be bred in rotting timber, and even 

 that they may be of a kind that fly away on arriving at 

 maturity (referring probably to caterpillars being developed 

 into moths), but that birds should be thus generated, he 

 says, is simply the repetition of a vulgar error, for not one 

 of the authors whom he has examined has seen what they 

 all affirm ; nor are they able to bring forward a single 

 eye-witness of it. He asks how it can be possible that 

 animals so large and so highly-organised as these birds 



* ' Physica Curiosa, sivc Mirabilia Natura: et Artis,' 1662, lib. ix. 

 cap. xxii. p. 960. 



