CURIOUS CREATURES. 179 



no man could tell where they breed their egges, for that 

 no man that ever wee knew, had ever beene under 80 ; 

 nor that land under 80 was never set downe in any 

 card, much lesse the red geese that breede therein." He 

 and his sailors declared that they had seen these birds 

 sitting on their eggs, and hatching them, on the coasts 

 of Nova Zembla. 



Du Bartas thus mentions this goose : 



" So, slowe Bootes underneath him sees, 

 In th' ycie iles, those goslings hatcht of trees ; 

 Whose fruitfull leaves, falling into the water, 

 Are turned, (they say) to living fowls soon after. 

 So, rotten sides of broken ships do change 

 To barnacles ; O transformation strange ! 

 'Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull, 

 Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull." 



I could multiply quotations on this subject. Gesner 

 and every other naturalist believed in the curious birth 

 of the Barnacle goose and so even did Aldrovandus, 

 writing at the close of the 

 seventeenth century, for from 

 him I take this illustration. 

 But enough has been said 

 upon the subject. 



REMARKABLE EGG. 



No wonder that a credulous 

 age, which could see nothing 

 extraordinary in the Barnacle 

 goose, could also, metaphori- 

 cally, swallow such an egg, as 

 Licetus, first of all, and Aldro- 

 vandus, after him, gives us in the accompanying true 



