CHAPTER IV 



STRANGE NATURAL HISTORY SUPERSTITIONS 



IN spite of modern education, unlimited travel 

 facilities, cheap books, popular lectures, and every 

 other means of enlightenment, superstition dies hard. 

 The fact is that all down the ages man has groped for 

 something to help him against the unknown, and he 

 does so still, hence golliwogs on motor-cars, goats on 

 battleships, and many other mascots fondly believed to 

 propitiate the goddess of fortune. 



We may laugh at our forefathers for believing that 

 barnacle geese were hatched from barnacle shells cling- 

 ing to the timbers of a sunken ship, or any other piece 

 of wood lying rotting at the bottom of the sea, but 

 surely it is equally absurd to credit Jenny Wren with 

 being the wife of Cock Robin, as many people alive in 

 the British Islands to-day certainly do. The oppor- 

 tunities of knowing better in the latter case are infinitely 

 greater than they were in the former. 



Although Gilbert White, one of the cutest of cute 

 observers, did not go so far as the Swedish naturalist, 

 who believed that in September swallows retired under 

 water to spend the winter months, he certainly was 

 convinced that many of them hibernated like bats and 

 hedgehogs and woke up in the spring to resume their 

 aerial activities. So sure was he of the soundness of 



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