HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND GOOSE 125 



the upper hand, though not without much opposition 

 In this country, owing to the defective education ad- 

 ministered in our public schools and older universities, 

 there is still quite a large number of well-to-do people 

 ready to believe in any " occult " imposture or fantasy 

 that may be skilfully brought to their notice. 



On the other hand, we must bear in mind when we 

 consider these strange beliefs held by really learned and 

 intelligent men in the past, that the investigation of 

 nature had not advanced very far in their time. It was 

 not held, as it is to-day, as an established fact that living 

 things are generated only by slips or cuttings of a parent 

 or from eggs or germs which are special detached 

 particles of the parent. It was held to be a matter of 

 common observation and certainty that all sorts of living 

 things are " spontaneously generated " by slime, by sea 

 foam, by mud, and by decomposing dead bodies of 

 animals and trees. It was also held, in consequence of 

 a blind belief in, and often a complete misunderstanding 

 of, the legends and fairy tales of the ancients and of 

 the preposterous " Bestiaries " and books on magic which 

 were the fashion in mediaeval times, that it is quite a 

 usual and natural thing for one animal or plant to change 

 into another. Hence there was nothing very surprising 

 (though worthy of record) in a barnacle changing into a 

 young goose, or in the buds of a tree becoming in some 

 conditions changed into barnacles ! 



So, too, the notion that rotting timber can " generate " 

 barnacles was not, to our forefathers, at all out of the 

 way or preposterous. Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 was 

 unable to make up his mind on this matter, and believed 

 in the spontaneous generation of mice by wheat, to 

 which he briefly alludes in his curious book called 



