182 ANAS BERNICLA. 



257. AtfAS BERfTICLA, L1NN-4BUS AKD WILSON. THE BRANT. 

 WILSON, PLATE LXXII. FIG. I. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 



THE brant, or, as it is usually written, brent, is a bird 

 well known on both continents, and celebrated in former 

 tiroes throughout Europe for the singularity of its 

 origin, and the strange transformations it was supposed 

 to undergo previous to its complete organization. Its 

 first appearance was said to be in the form of a barnacle 

 shell adhering to old water-soaked logs, trees, or other 

 pieces of wood taken from the sea. Of this goose- 

 bearing tree, Gerard, in his Herbal, published in 1597, 

 has given a formal account, and seems to have reserved 

 it for the conclusion of his work as being the most won- 

 derful of all he had to describe. The honest naturalist, 

 however, though his belief was fixed, acknowledges that 

 his own personal information was derived from certain 

 shells which adhered to a rotten tree that he dragged 

 out of the sea between Dover and Romney, in England ; 

 in some of which he found " living things without 

 forme or shape ; in others which were nearer come to 

 ripeness, living things that were very naked, in shape 

 like a birde ; in others, the birds covered with soft 

 downe, the shell half open, and the birde readie to fall 

 out, which no doubt were the foules called Barnakles."* 

 Ridiculous and chimerical as this notion was, it had 

 many advocates, and was at that time as generally 

 believed, and with about as much reason too, as the 

 present opinion of the annual submersion of swallows, 

 so tenaciously insisted on by some of our philosophers, 

 and which, like the former absurdity, will in its turn 

 disappear before the penetrating radiance and calm 

 investigation of truth. 



The brant and barnacle goose, though generally 

 reckoned two different species, I consider to be the 

 same. Among those large flocks that arrive on our 

 coasts about the beginning of October, individuals 



* See GERARD'S Herbal, Art. Goose-bearing Tree. 



