GEESE: COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL 135 



turned to geese. He says : " That eels may be bred 

 as some worms are, and some kinds of bees and wasps 

 are, either by dew, or out of the corruption of the 

 earth, seems to be made probable by the barnacles and 

 young goslings bred by the sun's heat and the rotten 

 planks of an old ship, and hatched of trees, both of 

 which are related for truths by Du Bartas and Lobel, 

 and also by our learned Camden, and laborious 

 Gerard, in his Herbal." Sylvester translates verses 

 of the above-mentioned Du Bartas in the words : 



So slow Bootes underneath him sees, 

 In th' icy islands, goslings hatched of trees, 

 Whose fruitful leaves, falling into the water, 

 Are turned, 'tis known, to living fowls soon after. 



So rotten planks of broken ships do change 

 To barnacles. O transformation strange ! 

 'Twas first a green tree, then a broken hull, 

 Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull. 



The name goose is the Anglo-Saxon ' gos.' 

 Generations ago, the grey goose used to visit 

 parts of England in far greater numbers than at 

 present. As the time of its arrival synchronised with 

 that of the harvest, and as the grey goose, when first 

 it reaches us, feeds largely on spent corn and pulse, 

 the bird became known as the wayz (stubble) goose 



