374 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 356 



he would gladly embrace the first chance to escape from the 

 country. Given up by his government, there was no hint in these 

 letters what course the Pacha would follow. These few hints of 

 mine, however, will throw some light on my postscript, which here 

 follows ; and, in my state of mind after reading these letters, I wrote 

 a formal letter which might be read by any person, — Pacha, 

 Jephson, or any of the rebels, — and addressed it to Jephson, as 

 requested ; but on a separate sheet of paper I wrote a private post- 

 script for Jephson's persual, as follows : — 



Kavallis, January. 



My Dear Jephson, — I now send thirty rifles and three Kavallis men 

 'down to the lake with my letters, with my urgent instructions that a 

 canoe should be set off and the bearers be rewarded. I may be able to 

 stay longer than six days here, perhaps ten days. I will do my best to 

 prolong my stay until you arrive without rupturing the peace. Should 

 we get out of this trouble, I am his most devoted servant and friend, 

 but if he hesitates again, I shall be plunged in wonder and perplexity. 

 I could save a dozen pachas. if ihey were willing to be saved. I would 

 go on my knees and implore the Pachi to be sensible of his own case. 

 He is wise enough in all things else, even for his own interest. Be 

 kind and good to him for his many virtues, but do not you be drawn 

 into the fatal fascination the Sudan territory seems to have for all 

 Europeans in late years. As they touch its ground, they seem to be 

 •drawn into a whirlpool, which sucks them in, and covers them with its 

 waves. The only way to avoid it is to obey blindly, devotedly, and un- 

 ■questioningly all orders from the outside. 



The committee said, " Relieve Emin with this ammunition. If he 

 -wishes to come out, the ammunition will enable him to do so. If he 

 elects to stay, it will be of service to him.'' The Khedive said the same 

 thing, and added, that, if the Pacha and his officers wished to stay, they 

 "Could do so on their own responsibility. Sir Evelyn Baring said the 

 same thing in clear, decided words ; and here I am, after 4,100 miles of 

 travel, with the last instalment of relief. Let him who is authorized to 

 take it, take it and come. I am ready to send him all my strength, 

 and will assist him ; but this time there must be no hesitation, but posi- 

 tive yea or nay, and home we go. 



Yours sincerely, 



Stanley, 



In the course of his correspondence Mr. Stanley says, — 



" On Feb. 6, Jephson arrived in the afternoon at our camp at 

 Kavallis. I was startled to hear Jephson, in plain undoubting 

 words, say, ' Sentiment is the Pacha's worst enemy. No one keeps 

 Emin back but Emin himself.' This is the summary of what Jeph- 

 son learned during the nine months from May 25, 1888, to Feb. 6, 

 1889. I gathered sufficient from Jephson's verbal report to con- 

 clude that during nine months neither the Pacha, Casati, nor 

 any man in the province, had arrived nearer any other conclusion 

 than what was told us ten months before. However, the diversion 

 in our favor created by the Mahdists' invasion, and the dreadful 

 slaughter they made of all they met, inspired us with hope that we 

 could get a definite answer at last, though Jephson could only re- 

 ply, ' I really can't tell you what the Pacha means to do. He says 

 he wishes to go away, but will not move. No one will move. It 

 is impossible to say what any man will do. Perhaps another ad- 

 vance by the Mahdists will send them all pellmell towards you, to 

 be again irresolute and requiring several weeks' rest.' " 



Stanley next describes how he had already sent orders to mass 

 the whole of his forces ready for contingencies. He also speaks of 

 the suggestions he made to Emin as to the best means of joining 

 him, insisting upon something definite ; otherwise it would be his 

 (Stanley's) duty to destroy the ammunition, and march homeward. 

 He continues, — 



"On Feb. 13, a native courier appeared in camp with a letter 

 from Emin, and with the news that he was actually at anchor just 

 below our plateau camp. But this is his formal letter to me, dated 

 the 13th : — 



Sir, — In answer to your letter of the 7th instant, I have the honor to 

 inform you that yesterday I arrived here with ray two steamers, carrying 

 a first lot of people desirous to leave this country under your escort. As 

 soon as I have arranged for a cover for my people, the steamers have to 

 start for Mswa Station to bring on another lot of people. Awaiting 

 transport with me are some twelve officers anxious to see you, and only 

 forty soldiers. They have come under my orders to request you to give 

 them some time to bring their brothers from Wadelai, and I promised 

 Ihem to do my best to assist them. Things having to some extent now 



changed, you will be able to make them undergo whatever conditions 

 you see fit to impose upon them. To arrange these, I shall start from 

 here with officers for your camp, after having provided for the camp '; 

 and if you send carriers, I could avail myself of some of them. I hope 

 sincerely that the great difficulties you had to undergo, and the gieat 

 sacrifices made byj'our expedition on its way to assist us may be rewarded 

 by full success in bringing out my people. The wave of insanity which 

 overran the country has subsided, and of such people as are now coming 

 with me we may be sure. Permit me to express once more my cordial 

 thanks for whatever you have done for us. 



Yours, 



Emin. 



BARNACLES. 



Among the curious myths which in the middle ages did duty for 

 natural science, one of the longest-lived, and yet one of the most 

 extraordinary, was that which not only conceived the common 

 shell-fish, the barnacle, to be the fruit of a tree, but went on to 

 allege its transformation into the sea-bird known as the barnacle- 

 goose. The successive changes from fruit to fish and from fish to 

 fowl which the myth involved proved no obstacle to its wide ac- 

 ceptance and long-continued credence. According to an article by 

 S. Heywood Seville, published in a recent number of K7io'wledge, it 

 was widely current before the end of the twelfth century. Giraldus 

 Cambrensis, writing in the reign of Henry II., gives, in his " Topo- 

 graphia Hiberniae," a detailed account of it. " There are in this 

 place," says he in one passage, " many birds which are called 

 barnacles. Against nature, nature produces them in a most ex- 

 traordinary way. They are produced from fir timber, tossed along 

 the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by 

 their beaks as if from a seaweed attached to the timber, surrounded 

 by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus, in process of 

 time, been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into 

 the water or fly freely away into the air. They derive their food and 

 growth from the sap of the weed or the sea by a secret and most 

 wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently with ray 

 own eyes seen more than a thousand of these same bodies of birds 

 hanging down on the seashore from one piece of timber, enclosed 

 in shells and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like 

 other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to 

 build nests in any corner of the earth." After this account, Giral- 

 dus proceeds to inveigh against the custom, which prevailed in 

 some parts of Ireland, of eating the barnacle-geese during Lent, — 

 a custom which was justified by those who followed it by the argu- 

 ment that the geese were " not flesh, nor born of flesh," and which 

 affords striking proof of the credence accorded to the story. 



Though contradicted from time to time by some of the bolder 

 writers and observers, the fable kept a strong hold on the popular 

 mind, and even the educated were not ashamed to avow their be- 

 lief in it. Sir John Maundevile alludes to it in his " Travels," 

 where he speaks of the " trees that bear a fruit that becomes flying 

 birds." Sir John somewhat naively adds, that the people " to- 

 wards Upper India," to whom he recounted the story, " had there- 

 of great marvel that some of them thought it was an impossibility." 

 The " Travels " appeared about 1370, and more than two centuries 

 later the subject was treated with considerable fulness, and in the 

 most obvious good faith, by John Gerarde, who, in his " Herbal," 

 published in 1597, devotes to it a chapter entitled " Of the Goose- 

 tree, Barnakle-tree, or the tree bearing Geese." in which, after 

 narrating the current belief as to the barnacle-geese being pro- 

 duced in the north of Scotland from shell-fish growing on trees, 

 he proceeds to pledge his own credit as to the main facts of the 

 story. Clearly, the myth was current in Shakspeare's time ; and^- 

 although, in an edition of the "Herbal" published in 1636, the 

 editor added a note of caution to the reader at the foot of the chap- 

 ter, yet eighty years after Gerard^ wrote, a scientific writer was to 

 be found, who, writing for scientific readers, asserted, of his own 

 knowledge, the existence of the birds within the shells. This was 

 Sir Robert Moray, who describes himself as " lately one of His 

 Majesty's council for the Kingdom of Scotland," and who contri- 

 buted to the " Philosophical Transactions " of 1677-78 a paper en- 

 titled " A Relation Concerning Barnacles," from which the follow- 

 ing passages are transacted: "Being in the Island of East, I saw 



