1895-96-] Popular Delusions in Natural History. 177 



I fear I must remain sceptical as to its existence until one 

 shall be caught or thrown ashore, or bones or other remains 

 reasonably attributable to it be dredged up from the bed of 

 the ocean. Meanwhile I shall just briefly recall to your 

 minds one well-known instance of a remarkable sea monster 

 which actually was washed ashore at Stronsa in Orkney in 

 the year 1808, to show the utter unreliability of many of the 

 accounts given by ordinary people of things which they have 

 seen or profess to have seen. This creature was said to have 

 been 56 feet in length, and numerous affidavits were taken as 

 to its appearance when found ; also a drawing was made 

 from these descriptions which the describers agreed was a 

 pretty correct likeness of what they had seen. These affidavits 

 along with the drawing were published in the second volume 

 of the Wernerian Society's Transactions, and represent to us 

 an elongated lizard-like monster with a small head, a long 

 neck, a mane of erect bristles extending along its back, and, 

 most remarkable of all, no less than three pairs of legs with 

 feet ! Fortunately some of the vertebras of this great sea 

 serpent were preserved and sent to the University of Edin- 

 burgh. They turned out to belong to the basking shark, 

 which does not reach a length of 56 feet, which is not a 

 creature of slender bujld, which has not a long neck nor any 

 mane along its back, and which of course has no feet at all, 

 but tins. 



Going on now to Birds, we may pass over the old and 

 bizarre idea narrated as actual fact by Hector Boece and 

 other authors, that barnacles, which we now know to be 

 crustaceans, grew on trees by the seashore, and that out of 

 them were produced actual geese ; a myth which no doubt had 

 its orgin in waterlogged pieces of wood — fragments of ship- 

 wrecks — being thrown ashore with barnacles adhering to 

 them, and in the tentacles (= crustacean feet) of the barnacle 

 having a somewhat rude resemblance to the feet of a bird. 

 It is indeed curious that the breeding haunts of the goose 

 called specially the Barnacle Goose, which is not a common 

 winter visitant to our shores, have never yet been discovered, 

 though they are said to have produced eggs in confinement. 



In former times, when the migration of birds was not 

 understood as it is now, people had to account for the dis- 



