SHELLS AND MOLLUSCOUS ANIMALS. 181 



valuable book with his own account of the bar- 

 nacle-goose. He describes certain trees found in 

 the north of Scotland and the adjacent islands, on 

 which grew these geese in shells, " which shells," 

 says our naturalist, "in time of maturitie, doe 

 open, and out of them grow those little living 

 things, which, falling into the water, doe become 

 fowles, whom we call Barnakles : in the north of 

 England, Brant-geese ; and in Lancashire, Tree- 

 geese ; but the others that doe fall upon land, 

 perish and come to nothing." This he asserts on 

 the testimony of others, and he then proceeds 

 gravely to declare, as he says, " what our eies have 

 seen and our hands have touched ; " and describing 

 the degrees of progress by which the fish is trans- 

 formed into the bird, he tells us, "that as the shells 

 gape the legs hang out, that the bird growing bigger 

 the shells open more and more, till, at length, it is 

 attached only by the bill, soon after which it drops 

 into the sea." " There," he adds, " it acquires 

 feathers and grows to a fowle." At what objects 

 beneath the skies our worthy naturalist could have 

 been looking when he fancied all this, it is difficult 

 to tell; but it is strange to see how an earnest, and 

 truthful, and intelligent man may have even his 

 senses beguiled by the prejudices or prepossessions 

 cherished from childhood. The poets followed in 

 the train of the philosophers, and Du Bartas thus 

 adverts to the common notion, and also to the 

 fancy that the barnacle-goose sprang from a 

 fungus : 



" So slow Bootes underneath him sees 

 In the icy islands goslings hatch'd of trees, 

 Whose fruitful leaves, falling into the water, 

 Are tura'd, as known, to living fowls soon after ; 



