124 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



then gives a description of these shells and the fish 

 contained therein, which is a correct enough account of 

 the common ship's barnacle. He proceeds, however, to 

 an assertion which is not of something which he saw or 

 handled, namely, that the animal within the shell, though 

 like the fish of an oyster, gradually grows to a bird and 

 comes forth hanging to the shell by its bill. Finally, he 

 says, it escapes to maturity. At the end of his chapter 

 on this subject, Gerard says : " I dare not absolutely 

 avouch every circumstance of the first part of this 

 history concerning the tree which beareth those buds 

 aforesaide, but will leave it to a further consideration." 



Gerard's " Herbal " was reprinted forty years later (in 

 1636) and edited by Johnson, a member of the Society 

 of Apothecaries. He writes with contempt of Gerard's 

 credulity as to the story of the barnacle and the goose, 

 and states that certain " Hollanders " in seeking a north- 

 east passage to China had recently come across some 

 islands in the Arctic Sea which were the breeding-place 

 of the so-called barnacle goose, and had taken and eaten 

 sixty of their eggs, besides young and old birds. 



Probably there were always lovers of the marvellous 

 and the occult who favoured and would favour to-day 

 the tradition of the conversion of one animal into 

 another and such wonders ; and there were also both in 

 the days of ancient Greece and Rome, and even in the 

 darkest of the Middle Ages, men with a sceptical and 

 inquiring spirit, who accepted no traditional testimony, 

 but demanded, as the basis of their admitting something 

 unlikely as nevertheless true, the trial of experiment and 

 the examination of specimens. What has happened 

 since Gerard's time and the incorporation of the Royal 

 Society in 1662, is that the sceptical men have got 



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