296 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



almost perfect even to the points of its wings, its beak, and its feet. 

 It still adhered to the shell by the tip of its beak. Learned men of 

 whom the king was the encouraging and munificent patron were of 

 the opinion that the flesh of the shell-fish had been transformed into 

 that of the bird." 



So completely was the statement that geese were pro- 

 duced from the fruit of trees, or generated from rotten 

 timber, accepted as true in the sixteenth century, that 

 Guillaume de Saluste, the Sieur du Bartas, in his "La 

 Semaine" a Miltonic poem, published in 1578, in which the 

 first few days of the existence of all terrestrial things are 

 described reverendly and with considerable power, repre- 

 sents Adam as wandering through the garden of Eden, and 

 regarding with astonishment, amongst other wonders of 

 the earthly Paradise in which he had been placed, these 

 goose-bearing trees. 



" Darbre qui -vapor tant sur ses branches tremblantes 

 Et les peuples nageurs et les trouppes volantes; 

 yentens VArbre aiiiourd'huy en Juverne mvant 

 Dont lefeuillage espars, par les souspirs du vent, 

 Est metamorphose d'une vertu ftconde 

 Sur terre en vrays oiseaux, en vrays poissons sur Vonde; " * 



which his translator, Sylvester, thus renders : 



" And then that tree from off whose trembling top 

 Both swimming shoals and flying troups doe drop ; 

 I mean that tree, now in Juverna growing, 

 Whose leaves, disperst by Zephyrs wanton blowing, 

 Are metamorphosed, both in form and matter, 

 On land to fowls, to fishes in the water."f 



* La Seconde Semaine, i e jour. 



t Du Bartas. His Divine Weekes and Workes ; translated and 

 dedicated to the King's most excellent Maiestie by Joshua Sylvester 

 London, 1584. 



