292 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



the foregoing anecdote of ^Eneas Sylvius, appears to have 

 entertained no doubt of the truth of the report, for he 

 writes : 



" In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit, conglomerated of 

 their leaves ; and this fruit, when in due time it falls into the water 

 beneath it, is endowed with new life, and is converted into a living 

 bird, which they call the * tree-goose.' This tree grows in the Island 

 of Pomonia, which is not far from Scotland, towards the north. 

 Several old cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention 

 the tree, and it must not be regarded as fictitious, as some new writers 

 suppose." 



One of the " new writers " to whom the eminent German 

 divine and mathematician referred was probably Polydorus 

 Vergilius, who bluntly avowed that he looked upon the 

 whole story as fabulous. For this brusque expression of 

 his opinion he was taken to task by Giralomo Cardano, 

 who told him that he had arrived too rashly at his con- 

 clusions, and that before doing so it was his duty to have 

 read the writings of Hector Boetius on the subject, and if 

 he were unable to refute them to have abstained from 

 treating the matter so dogmatically and superciliously. 



Cardano, however, whose character was a curious com- 

 pound of wisdom and folly, weakness and power, evidently 

 found it impossible to give full credence to so strange a 

 phenomenon. After rebuking Polydorus Vergilius for his 

 unreserved disbelief, he, with the caprice and inconsistency 

 for which he was noted, lays before his readers various 

 arguments for and against the possibility of geese being 

 generated in the manner described by Boetius, and, after 

 much seemingly impartial consideration of the subject, 

 quits it as one open to grave doubts, and requiring further 

 and more precise evidence to substantiate it* 



Cardano having taken this view of the matter in dispute, 

 * De Rcrnm Varietate. lib. vii. cap. 36, 1557. 



