THE BARNACLE GOOSE. 315 



very wisely, attributed to extraordinary, if not supernatural, 

 causes. 



This same barnacle goose was represented as growing out 

 of the transformed acorn-shell, which has thence, as if to per- 

 petuate the fable, been called anatifera, or " goose-bearing." 

 We are sometimes in the habit of giving ourselves airs, of 

 more vanity than discretion, in turning the guesses and con- 

 jectures of the men of former times, upon points which they 

 did not understand, into ridicule ; but these triumphs over 

 the dead are as ill judged as they are unmanly. According 

 to Lord Bacon, we are the ancients of the world, and the 

 men of former times were children in experience as compared 

 with us. Be it so. But the sages among us do not mock 

 at the ignorance of children they teach them to know 

 better ; and as we cannot school our forefathers in that way, 

 the wisest plan that we can follow is, to take heed lest some 

 of our own theories be not as wide of the truth as those 

 which we are so prone to censure, and that we do not doubly 

 merit the ridicule of those who come after, first, on account 

 of the absurdity of our opinions, and secondly, and retribu- 

 tively, because we have ridiculed those who are equally 

 beyond our instruction and our reproof. If half the time 

 which has been spent in exposing this absurdity, which, in 

 the nature of things, really stood in need of no exposure, 

 had been bestowed upon investigating the habits, and in- 

 quiring into the breeding haunts of the bird, its history 

 might, by this time, have been rendered as perfect as it is 

 still obscure. 



In former times, when the north of Europe, as well as 

 many parts of this country, were far more humid than they 

 are now, and the winters were, in consequence, much more 

 severe, and the storms much more violent, these birds often 

 came in vast multitudes, and in a state of such great exhaus- 

 tion, that they were floated to the shore perishing or dead. 



