ii8 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



it is to be found in Aristotle or Herodotus or any 

 classical author, nor in the " Physiologus." The legend 

 seems to have originated in the East, for the earliest 

 written statement which we have concerning it is by a 

 certain Father Damien, in the eleventh century, who 

 simply declares : " Birds can be produced by trees, as 

 happens in the island of Thilon in India." We have 

 also a reference to the same marvel in an ancient 

 Oriental book (the " Zohar," the principal book of the 

 Kaballah), as follows : " The Rabbi Abba saw a tree 

 from the fruits of which birds were hatched." The 

 earliest written statements of the legend are, it appears, 

 to the effect that there is a tree which produces fruits 

 from which birds are hatched. The belief in the story 

 seems to have died out at the end of the seventeenth 

 century, when the structure of the barnacle lying within 

 its shell was examined without prejudice, and it was 

 seen to have only the most remote resemblance to a 

 bird. The plumose legs or " cirrhi " of the barnacle 

 (Fig. lo) have a superficial resemblance to a young 

 feather or possibly to the jointed toes of a young bird, 

 and there the possibilities of comparison end. 



The notion that a particular kind of black goose 

 (a " brent "), which occurs on the marshy coast of Britain 

 in great numbers, is the goose, the bird, produced by the 

 barnacle was favoured by the fact that this goose does 

 not breed in Britain, and yet suddenly appears ii? large 

 flocks, in districts where barnacles attached to rotting 

 timber are often drifted on to the shore. It was accord- 

 ingly assumed by learned monks — who already knew the 

 travellei^s tale, that in distant lands birds are produced 

 by the transformation of barnacles — that this goose is 

 the actual bird which is bred from the barnacles, and 

 it was accordingly called " the barnacle goose." I think 



