BARNACLE GEESE GOOSE BARNACLES. 291 



1 264) in his ' Speculum Naturae,' xvii. 40, states that it took 

 place in Germany, and Jacob de Vitriaco (who died 1244) 

 in his ' Historia Orientalis,' cap. 91, mentions its occurrence 

 in certain parts of Flanders. 



Jonas Ramus gives a somewhat different version of the 

 process as it occurs in Norway. He writes : * "It is said 

 that a particular sort of geese is found in Nordland, which 

 leave their seed on old trees, and .stumps and blocks lying 

 in the sea ; and that from that seed there grows a shell fast 

 to the trees, from which shell, as from an egg, by the heat 

 of the sun, young geese are hatched, and afterwards grow 

 up ; which gave rise to the fable that geese grow upon 

 trees." 



But, strange to say, if any painstaking enquirer, wishing 

 to investigate the matter for himself, went to a locality 

 where it was said the phenomenon regularly occurred, he 

 was sure to find that he had literally, " started on a wild- 

 goose chase," and had come to the wrong place. This was 

 the experience of ^neas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards 

 Pope Pius II., who complained that miracles will always 

 flee farther and farther away ; for when he was on a visit 

 (about 1430) to King James I., of Scotland,! and enquired 

 after the tree which he most eagerly desired to see, he 

 was told that it grew much farther north, in the Orkney 

 Islands. 



Notwithstanding the suspicious fact that the prodigy 

 receded like Will o' the Wisp, whenever it was per- 

 sistently followed up, Sebastian Muenster, who relates \ 



* ' Description of Norway,' p. 244. 



f ^neas Sylvius gives us information concerning the personal 

 appearance of his royal host, whom he describes as " hominem quad- 

 ratum et multa pinguedine gravem? literally, "a square-built man, 

 heavy with much fat." 



% Cosmographia Universalis, p. 49, ed. 1572. The original edition 

 was published in 1550. 



U 2 



