1 68 Popular Delusions in Natural History. [Sess. 



a word to express the extreme of credulous simplicity ; but, as 

 far as my experience goes, I can assure you that a gull is not 

 gullible. If you tell a man a deliberate lie, and he has no 

 opportunity for discovering that you are an untruthful person, 

 is he to be blamed for accepting your statement ? Is his 

 intelligence to be doubted because, honest himself, he expects 

 you to be so too ? And it is just the same with gulls. 



At this meeting Prof. W. I. Macadam gave an interesting 

 lecture on " The Antiquities of the Islands of Seil and Luing, 

 and of the Garve Islands," illustrating his subject by a number 

 of lantern slides. 



V.—- POPULAR DELUSIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



By R. H. TRAQUAIR, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 

 Keeper of the Natural History Collections in the Museum of 

 Science and Art, Edinburgh. 



{Read Feb. 26, 1896.) 



I fear I must begin by apologising to you for choosing so 

 trivial and childish a subject on which to address you ; for 

 in speaking to an assemblage of Field Naturalists on such a 

 topic it is scarcely possible that I should have anything new 

 to lay before you, or indeed that I should be able to place 

 in a new light any of the matters of which I propose to treat. 

 The whole range of the subject must be already familiar to 

 you, and there can scarcely be an instance of a popular belief, 

 either proved or presumed to be a delusion, with which you 

 are not previously acquainted. 



Therefore I must crave your kind indulgence in endeavour- 

 ing to pass in review before you this evening some of the 

 numerous instances of tbe unceasing conflict between ignorance 

 and knowledge, between ready credulity and trained accuracy, 

 as well as of the difficulty in reconciling the credibility of well- 



