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."
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--The picture of the "Goose Tree," copied from
the first edition of Gerard's "Herbal."
The fruit-like oval bodies are "barnacles" (Lepas) fancifully
represented as growing like buds or fruit on a little tree. Some
of the young geese are drawn as in the act of escaping from the
barnacle-shells, and others are represented swimming in the water.]
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."