238 REPTILES AND BIRDS. 



flavour. However, in former times it was much sought after, but not 

 exactly for its culinary qualities. The reason this bird was shown such 

 preference was because people were permitted to eat it in Lent in place 

 of fish. The singular notions on which the Church of Rome founded 

 this toleration — a toleration, however, which still exists in full force 

 even at the present day — is as follows : The Councils of the twelfth 

 century permitted both the clergy and laity to eat this duck during 

 Lent, because it was a generally-accepted idea, founded on the writ- 

 ings of Aristotl , that these birds were not produced from an egg, but 

 had a vegetable origin. The learned of the Middle Ages and the 

 Renaissance, seeing large flocks of them suddenly appear, while 

 nothing was known whence they came, indulged in all kinds of con- 

 jectures to explain this mysterious fact. They attributed to them 

 origins which were marvellous ; one conjecturing that the feathery 

 appearance in the ciliated tentacles of certain molluscs which inhabit 

 the barnacle shell changed into Scoters ; others imagined that these 

 birds were produced from the wood of rotten fir-trees which had been 

 long floating about in the sea, or even from the fungi and marine 

 mosses which cling to the debris of wrecked ships ; others, again, 

 went so far as to assert that the north of Scotland, and especially the 

 Orkney Isles, produced a tree the fruit of which, falling into the sea, 

 developed into the bird which was called A?iser arboj-eus, in order 

 to commemorate its origin : this bird they imagined was the Black 

 Scoter. 



The naturalists who gave expression to these transcendental 

 views might certainly boast that they had Aristotle on their side ; 

 for this distinguished philosopher believed in the spontaneous gene- 

 ration of various kinds of animals. He asserted, for instance, that 

 rats sprung from decayed vegetables, and that bees proceeded from 

 the carcase of an ox. Who, for instance, is unacquainted with the 

 fine episode of the fourth book of Virgil's " Georgics," where this 

 poetic fiction is related in beautiful verse ? 



As a matter of fact, however, Pope Innocent III., better in- 

 structed than Aristotle in this department of natural history, passed 

 sentence on all these tales by forbidding its use during Lent ; but 

 no one, either in the monasteries, the castles, or the taverns, has 

 ever looked at this interdict of the sovereign pontiff in a serious 

 point of view. 



This controverted question, however, at last met with an unex- 

 pected solution. Gerard Veer, a Dutch navigator, during one of his 

 voyages to the north of Europe, found some eggs of the Velvet Duck. 

 Being quite ignorant of their nature, he brought them home, and put 



