CHAPTER XIV

THE HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE

THE curious belief, widely spread in former ages--that the creatures (described in the last chapter) called "barnacles" or "ship's barnacles"--often found attached in groups to pieces of floating timber in the sea as well as fixed to the bottoms of wooden ships--are the young of a particular kind of goose called "the barnacle goose," which is supposed to hatch out of the white shell of the long-stalked barnacle, is a very remarkable example of the persistence of a tradition which is entirely fanciful. It was current in Western Europe for six or seven centuries, and was discussed, refuted, and again attested by eminent authorities even as late as the foundation of the Royal Society--the first president of which, Sir Robert Moray, read a paper at one of the earliest meetings of the society in 1661, in which he described the bird-like creature which he had observed within the shell of the common ship's barnacle, and favoured the belief that a bird was really in this way produced by a metamorphosis of the barnacle.

The story was ridiculed and rejected by no less a philosopher than Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century, and was also discredited by the learned Aristotelian Albertus Magnus at about the same time. No trace of 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. 10) 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 in large flocks, in districts where barnacles attached to rotting timber are often drifted on to the shore. It was accordingly assumed by learned monks--_who already knew the traveller'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 that this identification was due to the exercise of a little authority on the part of the clergy in both France and Britain, who were thus enabled to claim the abundant "barnacle goose" as a fish in its nature and origin rather than a fowl, and so to use it as food on the fast-days of the Church. Pope Innocent III (to whom the matter was referred) considered it necessary in 1215 to prohibit the eating of "barnacle geese" in Lent, since although he admitted that they are not generated in the ordinary way, he yet maintained (very reasonably) that they live and feed like ducks, and cannot be regarded as differing in nature from other birds.

Thus we see that in early and even later days a good deal hung on the truth of this story of the generation of barnacle geese. The story was popularly discussed by the devout and by sceptics, and appears to have been known in France as "l'histoire du canard." At last in the seventeenth century it was finally discredited, owing to the account given by some Dutch explorers of the eggs and young of the barnacle goose--like those of any other goose--and its breeding-place in the far north on the coast of Greenland. The discredited and hoary legend now became the type and exemplar of a marvellous story which is destitute of foundation, and so the term "un canard" (short for histoire d'un canard), commonly applied in French to such stories, receives its explanation. Our own term for such stories, in use as long since as 1640, namely, "a cock-and-bull story," has not been traced to its historical source.[3]

[3] Probably it means "a silly story told by a cock to a bull!" as suggested by the French word _coq-à-l'âne_, which means a story told or fit to be told by a cock to an ass!

That the story of the goose or duck and the transformed barnacle was a popular one in Shakespear's time, whether believed or disbelieved, appears from his reference to barnacles in "The Tempest." Caliban says to Stephano and Trinculo, when they have all three been plagued by Prospero's magic, and plunged by Ariel into "the filthy mantled pool" near at hand, "dancing up to their chins": "We shall lose our time and all be turned to barnacles, or to apes with foreheads villainous low." Probably enough, this is an allusion to the supposed Protean nature of barnacles. They are not alluded to elsewhere in Shakespear.

One of the most precise accounts of the generation of geese by barnacles is that of the mediaeval historian Giraldus Cambrensis, who visited Ireland and wrote an account of what he saw in the time of Henry II, at the end of the twelfth century. He says: "There are in this place many birds which are called Bernacæ; Nature produces them, against Nature, in a most extraordinary way. They are like marsh-geese, but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as if they were a seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in process of time been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air." "I have frequently seen," he proceeds, "with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the seashore from a piece of timber, enclosed in their shells and ready formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds; nor do they ever hatch any eggs nor build nests anywhere. Hence bishops and clergymen in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh nor born of flesh!"

It is noteworthy that Giraldus does not state--in accordance with the tradition as reported by earlier writers--that there is a tree the buds of which become transformed into the geese, but says merely that the "small bodies of birds," clearly indicating by his description groups of ship's barnacles, are "produced from fir timber tossed along the sea." It is also noteworthy that he calls the geese themselves "Bernacæ," which is the Celtic name for a shell-fish.

Later the belief seems to have reverted to the older tradition, or probably enough the complete story, including the existence of the bird-producing tree, existed in its original form in "seats of learning" in other parts of the British Islands outside Ireland, and also in Paris and other places in Western Europe. For we find that in 1435 the learned Sylvius, who afterwards became Pope Pius II, visited King James of Scotland in order, among other things, to see the wonderful tree which he had heard of as growing in Scotland from the fruit of which geese are born. He complains that "miracles will always flee further and further," for when he had now arrived in Scotland and asked to see the tree, he was told that it did not grow there, but farther north, in the Orkneys. And so he did not see the tree.

In 1597, John Gerard, in the third book of his "Herbal, or History of Plants," writes as follows: "There are found in the north parts of Scotland and the Islands adjacent called Orchades, certaine trees whereon do grow certaine shell-fishes of a white colour tending to russett, wherein are contained little creatures which shels in time of maturity doe open and out of them grow those little living things which, falling into the water, doe become foules whom we call Barnacles, in the north of England Brent Geese, and in Lancashire Tree Geese." Gerard is here either adopting or suggesting an identification of the tradition of the tree which produces birds from its buds, with the floating timber bearing ship's barnacles, which were supposed to give birth to the brent geese. He does not say that he has seen, or knows persons who have seen, the barnacles attached to the branches of living trees. Nevertheless, he gives a picture of them so attached (Fig. 13). It has been suggested, in later times, that such a fixation of barnacles to the branches of living trees might occur in some of the sea-water lochs of the west of Scotland,--just as oysters become attached to the mangrove trees in the West Indies,--and it has further been suggested that willows might thus droop their branches into the sea-water, and that the catkins on the willow-shoots might be taken for an early stage of growth of the barnacles; but I have not come across any record of such fixation of barnacles on living shrubs or branches of trees, and I am inclined to think that Gerard's story of what occurs in the distant Orkneys is merely an attempt to substantiate the bird-producing tree of the Oriental story, by quietly assuming that the sea-borne timber covered with barnacles existed somewhere as living trees and exhibited this same property of budding forth barnacles which on opening liberated each a minute gosling. Gerard continues as follows: "But what our eyes have seen and hands have handled we shall declare." There is, he tells us, a small island in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, and there rotten trees and the broken timbers of derelict ships are thrown up by the sea. On them forms "a certain spume or froth which in time breeds into certaine shells." He then gives a description of these shells and the fish contained therein, which is a correct enough account of the common ship's barnacle. He proceeds, however, to an assertion which is not of something which he saw or handled, namely, that the animal within the shell, though like the fish of an oyster, gradually grows to a bird and comes forth hanging to the shell by its bill. Finally, he says, it escapes to maturity. At the end of his chapter on this subject, Gerard says: "I dare not absolutely avouch every circumstance of the first part of this history concerning the tree which beareth those buds aforesaide, but will leave it to a further consideration."

Gerard's "Herbal" was reprinted forty years later (in 1636) and edited by Johnson, a member of the Society of Apothecaries. He writes with contempt of Gerard's credulity as to the story of the barnacle and the goose, and states that certain "Hollanders" in seeking a north-east passage to China had recently come across some islands in the Arctic Sea which were the breeding-place of the so-called barnacle goose, and had taken and eaten sixty of their eggs, besides young and old birds.

Probably there were always lovers of the marvellous and the occult who favoured and would favour to-day the tradition of the conversion of one animal into another and such wonders; and there were also both in the days of ancient Greece and Rome, and even in the darkest of the Middle Ages, men with a sceptical and inquiring spirit, who accepted no traditional testimony, but demanded, as the basis of their admitting something unlikely as nevertheless true, the trial of experiment and the examination of specimens. What has happened since Gerard's time and the incorporation of the Royal Society in 1662, is that the sceptical men have got the upper hand, though not without much opposition. In this country, owing to the defective education administered in our public schools and older universities, there is still quite a large number of well-to-do people ready to believe in any "occult" imposture or fantasy that may be skilfully brought to their notice.

On the other hand, we must bear in mind when we consider these strange beliefs held by really learned and intelligent men in the past, that the investigation of nature had not advanced very far in their time. It was not held, as it is to-day, as an established fact that living things are generated only by slips or cuttings of a parent or from eggs or germs which are special detached particles of the parent. It was held to be a matter of common observation and certainty that all sorts of living things are "spontaneously generated" by slime, by sea foam, by mud, and by decomposing dead bodies of animals and trees. It was also held, in consequence of a blind belief in, and often a complete misunderstanding of, the legends and fairy tales of the ancients and of the preposterous "Bestiaries" and books on magic which were the fashion in mediaeval times, that it is quite a usual and natural thing for one animal or plant to change into another. Hence there was nothing very surprising (though worthy of record) in a barnacle changing into a young goose, or in the buds of a tree becoming in some conditions changed into barnacles!

So, too, the notion that rotting timber can "generate" barnacles was not, to our forefathers, at all out of the way or preposterous. Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 was unable to make up his mind on this matter, and believed in the spontaneous generation of mice by wheat, to which he briefly alludes in his curious book called "Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or an Enquiry into Vulgar and Common Errors." The account of the creation given by the poet Milton was based upon the belief in the daily occurrence of such spontaneous generation of living things of high complexity of structure and large size, from slime and mud. The process of creation of living things conceived by him was but a general and initial exhibition of an activity of earth and sea which in his belief was still in daily operation in remote and undisturbed localities.

In 1668 the Italian naturalist, Redi, demonstrated that putrefying flesh does not "spontaneously breed" maggots. He showed that if a piece of flesh is protected by a wire network cover from the access of flies, no maggots appear in it, and that the flies attracted by the smell of the meat lay their eggs on the wire network, unable to reach the meat, whilst if the wire cover is removed they lay their eggs on the meat, and from them the maggots are hatched. It took a long time for this demonstration by Redi to affect popular belief, and there are still country folk who believe in the spontaneous generation of maggots.[4]

[4] See the chapter, "Primitive Beliefs about Fatherless Progeny," in "Science from an Easy Chair," Second Series.

But few, if any, persons of ordinary intelligence or education now believe that these sudden productions of living things, without regular and known parentage, take place. The spontaneous generation of large, tangible creatures having ceased to be an article of general belief, the conviction nevertheless persisted for some time that at any rate minute microscopic living things were generated without parentage. This theory was more difficult to test on account of the need for employing the microscope in the inquiry, which was not brought to a high state of efficiency until the last century. By experiments similar to those of Redi, it was shown in the first half of last century by Theodor Schwann that even the minute bacteria do not appear in putrescible material when those already in it are killed by boiling that material, and when the subsequent access to it of other bacteria is prevented by closing all possible entrance of air-borne particles, or insect carriers of germs. It took another fifty years to thoroughly establish by observation and experiment the truth of Schwann's refutation of the supposed "spontaneous generation" of the minutest forms of life.

As an example of the strange incapacity for making correct observation and the failure to record correctly things observed which are frequently exhibited by the most highly placed "men of education," as well as by uneducated peasants and fisher folk, we have the short paper entitled, "A Relation concerning Barnacles," by Sir Robert Moray--the first president of the Royal Society of London (from 1661 until its incorporation in 1662)--a very distinguished man, and an intimate friend of King Charles II. This paper was read to the society in 1661 and published in 1677 in vol. xii. of the "Philosophical Transactions." Sir Robert relates how he found on the coast a quantity of dead barnacles attached to a piece of timber, and that in each barnacle's shell was a bird. He writes: "This bird in every shell that I opened, as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and completely formed that there appeared nothing wanting, as to the external parts, for making up a perfect sea-fowl; every little part appearing so distinctly that the whole looked like a large bird seen through a concave or diminishing glass, colour and feature being everywhere so clear and near. The little bill like that of a goose, the eyes marked, the head, neck, breast, wings, tail and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish coloured, and the feet like those of other waterfowl--_to my best remembrance_. All being dead and dry, I did not look after the inward parts of them." If the reader will now look at Fig. 15, C, which represents the soft parts of a barnacle when the shells of one side are removed, he will see how far Sir Robert Moray must have been the victim--as so many people naturally are under such circumstances--of imagination and defective memory when he wrote this account. I have put into italics in the above quotation from his "Relation" his confession that he is writing, not with his specimens before him, but from remembrance of them. Moreover, he tells us, with admirable candour, that the specimens were dead and dry when he examined them! One could not desire a better justification for the motto adopted by the Royal Society, "Nullius in verba," and for the procedure upon which in its early days the Society insisted--namely, that at its meetings the members should "bring in" a specimen or an experiment, and not occupy time by mere relations and reports of marvels. It is necessary even at the present day to insist on such demonstration by those who urge us to accept as true their relations of mysterious experiences with ghosts, and their "conviction" that they have conversed with "discarnate intelligences."