134 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GOOSE 



tissue of blunders. The Latin pernacula is a ' small 

 limpet,' and bernacula (Portuguese bernaca, French 

 barnache) is the Scotch bren-clake^ or ' Solan goose.' * 

 Both words being corrupted into ' barnacle,' it was 

 natural to look for an identity of nature in the two 

 creatures, and the cirri of the limpet were soon found 

 to resemble the feathers of a bird ; so it was given 

 out that the goose was the offspring of the limpet. 

 Gerard, in 1636, speaks of 'broken pieces of old 

 ships on which is found certain spume or froth, 

 which in time breedeth into shells, and the fish which 

 is hatched therefrom is in shape and habit like a 

 bird.' " Izaak Walton never doubted that limpets 



1 I do not know Dr. Brewer's authority for thus connecting 

 the Solan goose with bren-clake, and I think his doing so is 

 incorrect. The bird known as the Solan goose (Icelandic snla) 

 is the gannet, which is not a goose. It seems to me more 

 than probable that bren-clake was originally never any other 

 bird than the brent (note the first four letters of the word) ; 

 that the ' bren ' was in the first place the Anglo-Saxon ' brand,' 

 hence brant, hence brent ; that the brand-goose, or branded 

 goose, received its name from the white patches or ' brands ' on 

 its neck ; and that bren-clake has no connection whatever with 

 pernacula or bernacula. Though the Scottish tongue may call, 

 or may recently have called, the gannet the bren-clake, this is no 

 proof at all that the bird originally known as the bren-clake was 

 the gannet ; though we now know a certain goose as the ber- 

 nacle or barnacle goose, this is no proof at all that it was the 

 particular bird about which the barnacle myth grew. The 

 brent is widely known as the water bernacle in our own day. 



