174 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



1 5 1 1 or 1 5 1 2. It had a horn on the top of its head, two 

 wings, was without arms, and only one leg like that of a 

 bird of prey. It had an eye in its knee, and was of 

 both sexes. It had the face and body of a man, except 

 in the lower part, which was covered with feathers. 



Marcellus Palonius Romanus made some Latin verses 

 upon this prodigy, which may be thus rendered into 

 English : 



A Monster strange in fable, and deform 



Still more in fact ; s.iiling with swiftest wing, 



He threatens double slaughter, and converts 



To thy fell ruin, flames of living fire. 



Of double sex, it spares no sex, alike 



With kindred blood it fills th' ^mathian plain ; 



Its corpses strew alike both street and sea. 



There hoary Thetis and the Nereids 



Swim shudd'ring through the waves, while floating wide 



The fish replete on human bodies . Such, 



Ravennn, was the Monster which foretold 



Thy fall, which brings thee now such bitter woe, 



Tho' boasting in thy image triumph-crowned. 



THE BARNACLE GOOSE. 



Of all extraordinary beliefs, that in the Barnacle 

 Goose, which obtained credence from the eleventh to the 

 seventeenth centuries, is as wonderful as any. The then 

 accepted fact that the Barnacle Goose was generated 

 on trees, and dropped alive in the water, dates back 

 a hundred years before Gerald de Barri. Otherwise 

 Giraldus Cambrensis wrote in 1187, about these birds, 

 the following being a translation : 



" There are here many birds which are called Bernacae, 

 which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, 

 and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese, but 



