MORE AS TO THE BARNACLE AND GOOSE 137 



down to us. The supposition made by M. Houssay 

 (which I entirely support) is that some later Levantine 

 people — to whom these decorated pots or copies of 

 their decorations became known either in the regular 

 way of trade or as sailors' " curios " — were led to attempt 

 an explanation of the significance of the pictures drawn 

 upon them, and in accordance with a well-known 

 and rooted tendency — interpreted the fancies of the 

 artist as careful representations of astonishing fact. 

 The existence of a tree which produces buds which 

 become birds, and of a barnacle which becomes trans- 

 formed into a goose — is the matter-of-fact interpreta- 

 tion of the few pictures of these animals which have 

 come down to us, modern men, painted on the few pots 

 of that remote Mykenaean industry now in our museums. 

 It is not at all unlikely that in the vast period of time 

 between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D., the more striking of 

 these designs had been copied and familiarized in some 

 part of the ancient world. It is true that we do not 

 at present know in what part : we have not yet come 

 across these designs of later date than 800 B.C. The 

 absence of the story of the tree-goose from Greek and 

 Roman lore is striking. Neither Aristotle nor Herodotus 

 knew of it, although it has been erroneously stated that 

 m they refer to it. Yet the source of it was there in the 

 Greek isles almost under their noses (if one may speak 

 of the noses of such splendid and worshipful men of 

 old) in the artistic work — otherwise not unknown to the 

 ^'Greeks — of a civilization which preceded their own by 

 ..hundreds of years. There is other and ample evidence 

 ■as for instance that of the representation of the " fly- 

 ng gallop " (see " Science from an Easy Chair," Second 

 •eries, pp. 57 and 63), showing that Mykenaean art had 

 ittle or no direct effect on the Hellenes, although the 

 ■eputation of the skill of the old race in metal work 



