24 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



others, will give me the means of showing 

 that the Transmutation theory is wholly 

 without foundation in fact."* 



Five centuries after Giraldus, a French 

 herbalist named GERARD, traced the origin 

 of the Pentalasmus antefera, or " five-plated 

 goose bearer," to the Barnacle leucopsis, or 

 "bernicle goose," which, he says, " grows 

 on one of your British isles off the coast of 

 Lancashire," and comes from what is 

 familiarly known as " the ship barnacle" 

 As the ancient Grecians used to declare of 

 the lovely Venus Aphrodite, Gerard con- 

 tended that the spume exuding from pieces 

 of rotten timber cast upon the isle by 

 shipwracke breedeth muskles, and when the 

 muskles is perfectly formed the shell gapeth 

 open, and the first thing that appeareth is 

 a bit of string ; next come the legs of a bird 

 hanging out, which in short cometh to 

 full maturitie and falleth into the sea, 

 where it gathereth feathers, and groweth 

 into & fowled 



Gerard's theory of the tribe of birds in 



* Agassiz's Travels in Brazil, p. 33. 



