374 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



himself could not have surpassed. Belon, the orni- 

 thologist, also saw these geese, which he calls nuns 

 from their colour, lay their eggs and hatch their 

 young, and laughs at the vulgar notion of their being 

 engendered in rotten ship-timber *. About a century 

 before Belon, the celebrated ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolo- 

 mini, afterwards Pope Pius II., not being disposed 

 to believe the miraculous origin of the bernacle goose 

 without evidence, made eager inquiry after it when 

 he was in Scotland, the result of which was, to use 

 his own words, that " the miracle fled to remoter 

 regions, and that the famous goose-tree was not to 

 be found in Scotland, but in the Orkney Islands t '" 

 Gerard de Vera, being apparently unacquainted with 

 the writings of Albertus Magnus and Belon, and 

 even of his countryman, Clusius, gives an account of 

 their mode of breeding as a new discovery. " On 

 the west side of Greenland," says he, " was a great 

 winding and flat shore, resembling an island, where 

 we found many eggs of the bernacles, which the 

 Dutch call Rot-geese. We found, also, some of them 

 hatching, which, on being driven away, cried rot, rot, 

 rot (hence the Dutch name). One we killed with a 

 stone, and cooked it, with about sixty eggs, which 

 we had carried on board. These birds were identi- 

 cally the same with the bernacles, or rot-geese, which 

 came annually in great numbers about Wierengen in 

 Holland, though, from it being hitherto unknown 

 where they laid their eggs and reared their young, 

 authors have not scrupled to write that they are bred 

 on trees in Scotland J. After these ocular testi- 

 monies, it would be utterly superfluous to detail the 

 learned reasonings of Deusing and the author of 



* Oiseaux, p. 158, edit. Paris, 1555. 

 t Historia de Europa, cap. 46, edit. Helmstadt, 1700. 

 J Trois Navig. i'aites par les Hollandois au Septentrion, p. 113, 

 edit. Paris, 1599. 



De Anseribus Scoticis, 12mo,Groningae, 1659, 



