16 THE OAK. 



it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl bigger than a 

 mallard, and lesser than a goose, having black legs, bill, or 

 beake, and feathers black and white, spotted in such a 

 manner as our magpie ; called ija some places a 2>ie-a)inet ; 

 Avhich the people of Lancashire call by no other name 

 than a tree-goose ; which place aforesaid, and the parts 

 adjoining, do much abound therewith that one of the best 

 is bought for three-halfpence. For the truth hereof, if 

 any doubt, let them repair to me, and 1 shall satisfy them 

 by the testimonie of good witnesses."^ 



This strange fable took its rise from a certain shell-fish 

 being frequently found attached to pieces of wood which 

 had long lain in salt-water. This shell-fish, now called 

 Le^ms anatifera, is provided with a long leathery tube, by 

 which it attaches itself to the bottom of vessels, and to 

 other timber ; it is also furnished near the other extremity 

 with a number of curved, feathery fibres, which, when 

 expanded, bear some resemblance to the tail of a bird.^ 

 From this fancied similarity, and the coincidence that the 

 shell-fish was found in abundance in places which the 

 Barnacle-goose frequented, probably to make them its food, 

 the fable originated — a fertile imagination making up for 

 the barrenness of the facts. Before the Eeformation, Dr. 

 Walsh tells us, the fishy origin of the bird was so firmly 

 believed, that the question was warmly and learnedly 

 disputed whether it might not be eaten in Lent. 



The story may have gained a more ready credence from 



1 Herbal, p. 1391. 



^ " It is hardly worth while to mention the clayks, a sort of geese, 

 which arc believed by some, with great admiration, to grow upon 

 trees on this coast, and in other places ; and, when they are ripe, to 

 fall down into the sea, because neither their nests nor eggs can any- 

 where be found. But they who saw the ship in which Sir Francis 

 Drake sailed round the world, when it was laid up in the River 

 Thames, could testify that little birds bred in the old rotten keels 

 of ships, since a great number of such, without life and feathers, 

 stuck close to the outside of the keel of that ship. Yet I should 

 think that the generation of these birds was not from the logs of 

 wood, but from the sea, termed by the poets ' the parent of all 

 things.' " — Camdeiis Britannia. 



