182 
ANAS BERNICLA. 
257. ANAS BERNICLA , LINN -ZEUS AND WILSON. — THE BRANT. 
WILSON, PLATE LXXII. FIG. I. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 
The brant, or, as it is usually written, brent , is a bird 
well known on both continents, and celebrated in former 
times throughout Europe for the singularity of its 
origin, and the strange transformations it was supposed 
to undergo previous to its complete organization. Its 
first appearance was said to be in the form of a barnacle 
shell adhering to old water-soaked logs, trees, or other 
pieces of wood taken from the sea. Of this goose- 
bearing tree, Gerard, in his Herbal , published in 1597, 
has given a formal account, and seems to have reserved 
it for the conclusion of his work as being the most won- 
derful of all he had to describe. The honest naturalist, 
however, though his belief was fixed, acknowledges that 
his own personal information was derived from certain 
shells which adhered to a rotten tree that he dragged 
out of the sea between Dover and Romney, in England ; 
in some of which he found “ living things without 
forme or shape ; in others which were nearer come to 
ripeness, living things that were very naked, in shape 
like a birde ; in others, the birds covered with soft 
downe, the shell half open, and the birde readie to fall 
out, which no doubt were the foules called Barnakles.”^ 
Ridiculous and chimerical as this notion w r as, it had 
many advocates, and was at that time as generally 
believed, and wdth about as much reason too, as the 
present opinion of the annual submersion of sw r allow r s, 
so tenaciously insisted on by some of our philosophers, 
and which, like the former absurdity, will in its turn 
disappear before the penetrating radiance and calm 
investigation of truth. 
The brant and barnacle goose, though generally 
reckoned tw r o different species, I consider to be the 
same. Among those large docks that arrive on our 
coasts about the beginning of October, individuals 
* See Gerard’s Herbal , Art. Gocse-beariug Tree. 
