BARNACLES. 247 



It is strange that in matters concerning the marvellous, 

 even men of education will take pains to deceive them- 

 selves, and, instead of investigating nature with a " learned 

 spirit," give a license to ill-directed imagination, and credit 

 absurdities. When such men are so credulous, how can 

 we wonder at the superstitions of the illiterate ? 



The first phase of the story in question is, that certain 

 trees, resembling willows, more particularly in one of the 

 Orkneys, Pomona, produced at the ends of their branches 

 small swelled balls, containing the embryo of a goose 

 suspended by the bill, which, when ripe, fell off into the 

 sea and took wing. 



So long ago as the twelfth century, the story was pro- 



THE BARNACLE GOOSE. 



mulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis, in his " Topographia 

 Hibernian," and Munster, Saxo Grammaticus, Scaliger, 

 Fulgosus, Bishop Leslie, and Olaus Magnus, all attested to 



