52 NATURAL HISTORY oi NORWAY. 



SECT. XII. 



concha: ava* To the Infe&a Aquatica I have yet to add that little creature, 

 which generates in the Conchse avitificse ; and, according to the 

 general tradition, fhould be a young Duck or Goofe, of that 

 fort that we commonly call Stok-iEnder, and alfo Vand-Eller: 

 and by fome Angle-Tasker ; which lafl name I rather give them, 

 becaufe the (hell looks fomething like a pocket. The birds which 

 have been fuppofed hatched from thefe, generate in the common 

 way ; I fhall give an account of thefe in the following chapter 

 of birds. That any kind of fowls fhould grow upon trees, and 

 be properly and truly called Tree Geefe, is a thing which I have 

 narrowly examined into, and find without the lead foundation ; 

 tho' it is here, and in other places, taken on the credit of one 

 from another. Hr. Jonas Ramus writes thus in his Chorographi- 

 cal Defcription of Norway, p. 244, concerning this matter : 

 Geefe Sd to * fc * s ^ a ^ t ^ lat a P art i cu l ar f° rt of Geefe is found in Nordland (one 

 grow on trees, may fay, with a great deal of truth, that thofe that are fuppofed 

 to be Angle-Taskers, are found in many more places here on the 

 Weft fide of Norway) which leave their feed on old trees, and 

 flumps and blocks lying in the fea ; and that from that feed there 

 grows a fliell fafl to the tree, from which fhell, as from an egg by 

 the heat of the fun, young Geefe are hatched, and afterwards 

 grow up ; which gave rife to the fable, that Geefe grow upon 

 trees. So far Hr. Ramus, who looks upon it as a fable : but how 

 are we to comprehend fuch an ambiguous way of talking, namely, 

 to grow upon trees ? This, he fays, is not to be underflood to 

 grow like fruit growing on a tree*; on the contrary, his 

 opinion is, that Geefe grow on old piles and timber bulwarks, 

 and the like at the fea fide; namely, when the Wild-Goofe has 

 dropped or left his feed on the piles, Sec. which gives fome 

 a ground and reafon for the belief of it. At the fame time I 

 may inform the reader, that the well-deferving, and otherwife 

 not credulous, Hr. Ramus, lived in the eafl country, full 50 

 Norway miles from thefe coafls, otherwife he would have 

 better examined into the origin or rife of this opinion, and noC 

 have been fo liable to miflake. 



The truth is this, that on the aforefaid old timber piles, and 

 alfo on the keels of old fhips, there is feen to grow, as by the 



* Michael Meyerus endeavoured to maintain this opinion in a particular treatife, 

 'De volucri arborea; and in a public fentence, in the Sorbonne at Paris, upon it, it 

 was allowed that thefe Geefe, for that reafon, were not to be reckoned amongft birds ? 

 and therefore allowed to be eat in Lent and fafting fcafons, Mich, Bernh. Valentini 

 Muf. Mufcorum, Lib. iii. p. 466, 



i exa& 



