BRITISH BIRDS. 253 



Other authors, indeed, less credulous, suspected 

 the truth of these assertions : Belon was of the 

 number of those who laughed at the story in his 

 day; and Willoughby, long after him, treated such 

 incoherent narratives with contempt. It must ex- 

 cite regret, that so respectable, so learned, and so 

 grave an author as Gerard, should not only have 

 believed this wonderful transformation, but that 

 he should have introduced the idle tale into his 

 invaluable Herbal.* But even to enumerate these 

 authors, or to quote the entertaining parts of the 

 wild whimsies with which they have embellished 

 their descriptions of these birds, would far exceed 

 the limits of this work, and would only serve to 

 prove (were that necessary) how credulous, not 

 only the great unthinking mass, but even the 

 philosophers, once were, and how far it was pos- 

 sible for such circumstantially-told miracles to lay 

 the understandings of mankind fast asleep. Bar- 

 tholin discovered that these Goose-bearing conches 

 contained only a shell-fish of a particular kind, a 

 species of multi valve the P&usse-pieds of Wormius 

 and Lobel, and the Lepas Anatifera of Linneeus. 



* See Gerard's Herbal, published in 1597, article li The Goose- 

 Tree." 



