BAENACLES ; THEIR FACTS AND THEIR FICTIONS. 
387 
and hollis thairof growis small wormis. First they schaw their 
heid and feit, and last of all they schaw their plumis and 
wyngis.” Boece had evidently some idea of a normal process 
of generation, for, after scoffing at the prevalent belief of the 
rude and ignorant pepyl ” that the geese were produced by 
the trees fringing the shore, and fell, like over-ripe fruit, into 
the water, and then straightway swam away, he proceeds to 
state ‘‘that als sone as their appillis or frutis fallis of the tre 
in the see flude, they grow first wormeetin, and be schort 
process of tyme ar alterat in geis.” 
“ Old Grerarde ” substantially repeats the same tale in his 
Appendix to his “ Herball,” affirming that, “ There are found 
in the north part of Scotland, and the islands adjacent, called 
Orchades,* certaine trees, whereon doe growe certain shell-fishes, 
of a white colour, tending to russet ; wherein are conteined 
little living creatures ; which shels in time of maturitie doe 
open, and out of them grow those little living foules, whom we 
call Barnakles, in the north of England Brant Greese, and in 
Lancashire tree Greese ; but the other that do fall upon the 
land perish and come to nothing.” All this is hearsay ; but he 
goes on to describe “ what our eis have seene, and hands have 
touched,” in a “ small island in Lancashire, called the Pile of 
Foulders,” which seems to have been a receptacle and lumber- 
room for all the “ flotsam and jetsam ” of the waves of the Irish 
Channel.f 
Besides giving a rough woodcut, showing all the phases in the 
produce of the Bernicle-tree, from the stage of branch-bud to 
the launch of its fledgling fruit on the surrounding waters, he 
solemnly remarks : — 
‘‘ The Historie whereof to set foorth according to the woorthiness and 
raritie thereof, woulde not onely require a large and peculiar volume, but 
also a deeper search into the bowels of nature then my intended purpose 
wil suffer me to wade into, my insufficiencie also considered, leaving the 
historie thereof rough he wen unto some excellent men, learned in the secrets 
of nature, to be both fined and refined ; in the mean space take it as it 
falleth out, the naked and bare truth, though unpolished.” 
About a century later we come across “ a fined and refined ” 
version of this “ rough hewen historie,” in “ A Eelation con- 
cerning Barnacles, by Sir Eobert Moray, lately one of His 
* The Orkneys ; not far from that “ Ultima Thule ” which would have 
been a limit to all fiying legends. 
t Probably Peel Island, the Pile of Fouldrey (‘‘la peele de Foddray,” or 
the Pylle of Folder). See Baines’ “History of the County Palatine and 
Duchy of Lancaster,” vol. ii. p. 651. London : 1870. 
c c 2 
