40 LONDON BIRDS 



little ' boarded out ' babies and making them restless 

 and before long the foster parents again were childless. 



A couple of hundred years ago no one, with any 

 pretence to education, would have been foolish enough 

 to expect anything but failure in such an experiment 

 as the park-keeper's ; Barnicles ' fowles like to wylde 

 ghees which growen wonderly vpon trees ' being, as 

 every one knew, the exception that proved the rule that 

 birds are hatched from eggs. 



The belief that the Bernicle Goose grew from the 

 ' pedunculated cirripede ' that bears its name (Lepas 

 anatifera) lingered perhaps the longer because it was 

 good for the Monks of Holy Isle and other northern 

 monasteries. ' Men of relegyon ' we are told in one of 

 Caxton's priceless volumes, ' eet Barnacles vpon fastynge 

 days bycause they ben not engendered with flesche.' 



Hudibras made a slip in his natural history when he 

 said that 



'Bernicles turn Soland Geese 

 In th' Islands of the Orcades ! ' 



The SAvans, of which there were a short time 

 ago two kinds, black and white, in St. James's Park, 

 have now been banished to the remoter waters of 

 Regent's Park a long series of evil doings having 

 culminated in the deliberate murder by the old male 

 ' Mute Swan,' of a lately introduced Pelican. 



The old Turk could afford to despise Ducks and 

 Geese. But a white bird of almost his own size, with 

 a preposterous beak, was a brother too near the throne 

 to be borne with, and to be bow-stringed at once. 



