30 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
would hardly be complete without areference to them, for there 
are many which have an important bearing upon birds: a 
book, for instance, might be written on the folk-lore of the 
Reven, and very curious it would be. It was not until the 
seventeenth century that the Legendary or Credulous Period 
of Natural History, as one writer aptly terms it, was laid to 
rest, and finally disappeared. Then with the spread of 
printing, it gave place to a better era—an era of investigation 
at first hand, which elicited facts, and scattered idle beliefs 
about birds and other animals. Although the legend about 
the Solan Goose does not refer to the British Isles, it is worth 
giving because of its age, and we shall probably not be wrong 
in assigning it to the tenth century. 
A certain sorcerer in the Ferées—a group of islands 
between Iceland and the Shetlands—who flourished many 
centuries ago, seeking peace after many fights from one 
who was a giant, bribed the foe with the yearly promise of 
“a sort of Whales and Fowl in the Land, which were not 
gotten in other places of Feroe.” This priceless Fowl was 
the ‘Sule,’ or Solan Goose, which was then and_ there 
bestowed by the sorcerer on the island of Myggenaés, where 
they breed to this day. This strange story, which is another 
evidence to the antiquity of the name “Sule,” or Solan, is 
related by Lucas Jacobus Debes in the “ Ferde and Feroa 
Reserata,’ 1673. 
A New Zealand Legend.—Sir Walter Buller tells us that 
the Australian Gannet (Sula serrator) has a place in an ancient 
fable of New Zealand, in which one of the Maori legends 
recounts a trial of strength which is supposed to take place 
between the birds of the sea and the birds of the land.* 
The Legend of the Barnacle—Although we have no dccu- 
mentary evidence of the famous legend of the Barnacle before 
the twelfth century, yet we may surmise that it existed in 
England before that. There is no mention of the fable in 
classical authors, yet Sir Ray Lankester tells of an un- 
mistakable drawing of a ship’s barnacle producing a young 
Goose, which occurs on a Mycenean vase dug up in Crete. 
From what origin the story sprang it isnot easy to comprehend. 
* “ Birds of New Zealand’ (1888), II., p. 148. 
