SINGULAR CASE OP IGNORANCE. 29 



their inhabitants imagined that the mollusk gave birth 

 to these birds, and it therefore was called the anatifera, 

 or bernacle. 



It is indeed a singular fact that, not very long ago, 

 it was supposed that a particular species of goose grew 

 in shells depending from trees within reach of the tides. 

 Even the most learned writers of Europe, from the 

 fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, repeat the same 

 strange story. Gerard, for instance, proceeds to de- 

 scribe what, he says, he had actually beheld and ex- 

 amined ; and then mentions a small isle on the coast 

 of Lancashire, in which is found, on pieces of old timber, 

 " a certain spume or froth, which in time breedeth into 

 certain shells," like those of the mussel, and out of these 

 shells, in due time, he says, " come the legs of a bird 

 hanging out ; and as it groweth greater it openeth the 

 shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and 

 hangeth only by the bill ; in short space after it cometh 

 to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gather- 

 eth feathers, and groweth to a fowl bigger than a mal- 

 lard, and lesser than a goose." The bird, he says, is 

 spotted something like a magpie, and is sometimes called 

 by the people a pieannet, and sometimes a tree-goose. 

 Thus far Gerard appears to speak from report, but he 

 also declares that he found, near Dover, a shell with 



