Il8 pfant "l5)ore, TsegeT^^/, and l^ijriq/", 



at once into ducks, acquired plumage, and then flew off. His 

 Holiness remarks that he had been unable to obtain any proof of 

 this wondrous tree existing in Scotland, but that it was to be found 

 growing in the Orkney Isles. 



As early as the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus expressed 

 his disbelief in the stories of birds propagated from trees, yet there 

 were not wanting writers who professed to have been eye-witnesses 

 of the marvels they recounted respecting Bernicle or Claik Geese. 

 Some of these witnesses, however, asserted that the birds grew on 

 living trees, while others traced them to timber rotted in the sea, or 

 boughs of trees which had fallen therein. Boece, who favoured 

 the latter theory, writes that " because the rude and ignorant 

 people saw oft-times the fruit that fell off the trees (which stood 

 near the sea) converted within a short time into geese, they believed 

 that yir-geese grew upon the trees, hanging by their nebbis [bills] 

 such like as Apples and other fruits hangs by their stalks, but 

 their opinion is nought to be sustained. For as soon as their Apples 

 or fruit falls off the tree into^ the sea-flood, they grow first worm- 

 eaten, and by short process of time are altered into geese." 

 Munster, in his ' Cosmographie,' remembers that in Scotland " are 

 found trees which produce fruit rolled up in leaves, and this, in 

 due time, falling into water, which it overhangs, is converted into a 

 living bird, and hence the tree is called the Goose-tree. The same 

 tree grows in the island of Pomona. Lest you should imagine that 

 this is a fidtion devised by modern writers, I may mention that all 

 cosmographists, particularly Saxo Grammaticus, take notice of this 

 tree." Prof. Rennie says that Montbeillard seems inclined to 

 derive the name of Pomona from its being the orchard of these 

 goose-bearing trees. Fulgosus depidts the trees themselves as 

 resembling Willows, "as those who had seen them in Ireland and 

 Scotland " had informed him. To these particulars, Bauhin adds 

 that, if the leaves of this tree fall upon the land, they become birds; 

 but if into the water, then they are transmuted into fishes. 



Maundevile speaks of the Barnacle-tree as a thing known and 

 proved in his time. He tells us, in his book, that he narrated to 

 the somewhat sceptical inhabitants of Caldilhe how that " in oure 

 contre weren trees that beren a fruyt that becomen briddes fleiynge : 

 and thei that fallen on the erthe dyen anon : and thei ben right 

 gode to mannes mete." 



Aldrovandus gives a woodcut of these trees, in which the 

 foliage resembles that of Myrtles, while the strange fruit is large 

 and heart-shaped. 



Gerarde also gives a figure of what he calls the " Goose-tree, 

 Barnacle-tree, or the tree bearing geese," a reproduction of which 

 is annexed. And although he speaks of the goose as springing 

 from decayed wood, &c., the very fact of his introducing the tree* 

 into the catalogue of his ' Herbal,' shows that he was, at least, 

 divided between the above-named opinions. " What our eyes 



