THE BEENACLE GOOSE. 31 



head; but one must take the force of imagination to 

 help to make it look so. This I have constantly found 

 on many examinations ; and in all mine inquiries I can- 

 not learn that any one has ever seen anything more." 



The doctors of the Sorbonne in Paris, a body com- 

 prising the most learned men of France, employed in 

 this case the ingenuity so often practised by the church 

 of Rome, to alleviate the burdens imposed on its mem- 

 bers. They declared that bernacle geese were not to 

 be considered as birds, and that therefore their flesh 

 might properly be eaten on every fast. Thus they 

 availed themselves of prevailing ignorance, as papists 

 have done in former times, and do still, and would every- 

 where keep the mass of the people from acquiring . 

 general knowledge. From the grossest ignorance of 

 natural history we have but very recently escaped. 

 !More truth than appears at the first glance will be 

 found in the statement of one of the correspondents 

 of " The Idler," in reference to the time in which he 

 wrote. ••' All the faults of my life," he says, " were for 

 nine months circulated through the town with the most 

 active malignity, because I happened to catch a moth 

 of peculiar variegation ; and because I once outbid all 

 the lovers of shells, and carried off a nautilus, it was 

 hinted that the validitv of rav uncle's will ousrht to be 



