I saw lying upon the shore, a cut of a large fir tree, of about two feet and a half in diameter, and nine or ten feet long, which had lain so long out of the water, that it was very dry; and most of the shells that had formerly covered it were worn or rubbed off. Only on the parts that lay next the ground, there still hung multitudes of little shells, that were of the colour and consistence of mussel shells. This barnacle-shell is thin about the edges, and about half as thick as broad. Every one of the shells hath some cross-seams or sutures, which, as I remember, divide it into five parts. These parts are fastened one to another, with such a film as mussel-shells have. These shells are hung at the tree by a neck, longer than the shell, of a kind of filmy substance, round and hollow, and creased not unlike the windpipe of a chicken, spreading out broadest where it is fastened to the tree, from which it seems to draw and convey the matter which serves for the growth and vegetation of the shell, and little bird within it. In every shell that I opened I found a perfect sea-fowl : 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 *."

Long before the days, however, of these credulous authors whom we have quoted, the celebrated Albertus Magnus (who died at Cologne in 1280) expressly says that the stories about the tree-geese (Baumgäns) are "altogether absurd," and for the best possible reason, as I myself," he adds, ،، and many of my friends along with me, have seen them pair, lay eggs, and nurse their young t." He subjoins an excellent description of the bird, such as Linnæus * Philosophical Transactions.

+ Hist. Anim. xxiii. editio, Venetiis, 1495.

"I saw a cuckoo in the act of watching a pair of titlarks construct their nest. The larks had just commenced building, and did not seem to be at all disconcerted at the presence of the cuckoo, which sat on the ground about seven or eight yards from the spot, attentively observing them; and, when disturbed, flew away with great reluctance, and only to a short distance. This nest, which was on Kersal Moor, where the races are annually held, was too distant from my residence to permit me to examine it frequently, and to make such numerous and minute observations as I wished; but on the 12th of May, I again visited it, in the confident expectation that it would contain a cuckoo's egg, and I was not disappointed. I may further remark, in confirmation of this discovery, which, by exhibiting a curious and hitherto unnoticed instinctive propensity of this bird, forms an interesting addition to its history, that cuckoos almost invariably deposit their eggs in the nests of other birds, as soon as those birds begin to lay; not unfrequently, indeed, immediately after the exclusion of the first egg: and Mr. Baker informs me, that he saw the hen of that pair of cuckoos, which he observed so closely last spring, fly directly to a titlark's nest, as to a place with which she was perfectly familiar, though he had never seen her there before, and after raising her head, and looking round, as if to ascertain whether she was noticed, went and deposited her egg in the nest, before the larks had begun to lay

"The mean number of eggs," Mr. Blackwall adds, "laid by those birds that are usually selected by the cuckoo to provide for its progeny is five. Now, according to Pinkerton, the area of England and Wales is 49,450 square miles, which, reduced to square yards, gives 153,176,320,000. This, divided by *Manchester Memoirs, 2d series, vol. iv. p. 456.

the 'Physica Curiosa' against the miraculous origin of the bernacle goose.

The origin of the absurdities we have quoted may all be traced to the singular form of a multivalve shell, which Linnæus has done wrong, we think, in designating goose-bearing (Lepas anatifera, LINN.); as "feathered" (plumata) would have been more appropriate and less in the style of fable. Bosc, Cuvier, and other modern conchologists have formed the equally objectionable generic term Anatifa. The shell itself, which is about an inch and a half long when full grown, is composed of five valves, exceedingly smooth, and of a bluish white colour, with yellow margins. The peduncle, or footstalk, supposed to be the neck of the young goose, is white and cartilaginous, and varies in length from half an inch or less to several feet. What was taken for feathers are the fingers (tentacula) of the shell-fish, of which twelve project in an elegant curve, and are used by it for making prey of small fish.

These shells are chiefly found adhering to the bottoms of ships and pieces of timber floating in the sea. Colonel Montagu mentions his having seen a fir plank, more than twenty feet long, which was drifted on the coast of Devonshire, completely covered from end to end with bernacle shells. They are sometimes also, though more rarely, found on rocks: we have collected specimens on the basalt rocks at the Giants' Causeway in Ireland, and on the conglomerate sandstone at Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire *.

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It shows how exceedingly difficult it is to eradicate popular fables, that, "even of late years," as Bingley mentions, an attempt was made to impose upon the credulity of the public, by an exhibition in London of a large collection of these shells, as shells from which, as the advertisements stated, the bernacle * J. R.

having been found in the nests of wrens, it may well excite a question in what manner it was introduced, for the entrance of any of these little nests being in the side, and not more than an inch or an inch and a half in diameter either way, it is obviously impossible so large a bird as the cuckoo could get into the nest, which is barely wide enough to admit the wren herself. Should we reject (though we have no reason to do so) the evidence of M. Montbeillard with respect to the wrens, we cannot refuse to believe the accuracy of Dr. Jenner, who found a cuckoo's egg in the nest of a wagtail in a hole under the eave of a cottage; though we think this was rather a singular place for a wagtail to build in. Nay, even leaving these domed nests with a narrow entrance out of the question, and taking the nests most usually chosen by the cuckoo for her progeny, we must conclude that she cannot in many instances sit upon the nest while depositing her egg. She may, indeed, manage this in the nests of the larks, and in the wagtail's, when built, as it usually is, on the ground; but the case is very different with the hedge-sparrow, the greenfinch, the linnet, or the whitethroat, all of whose nests are usually placed in thick thorn-bushes, or among brambles, and so closely fenced in therewith, that the school-boy can with difficulty reach in his hand (which is not one-third the size of a cuckoo) to rob them of their eggs. From these facts, we think we are fully entitled to infer that it is physcially impossible for the cuckoo to sit upon the nests in question when she deposits her egg. We are unable, however, to offer anything beyond conjecture as to the actual manner in which the thing is done; though Vaillant obtained pretty satisfactory evidence that one at least of the African cuckoos carries the egg in her bill in order to lay it in nests having a narrow side entrance such as that of the

among the more uninformed of the Scottish peasantry at the present day, that the soland goose, or gannet (Sula alba, MAYER), not the bernacle, grows by the bill upon the cliffs of the Bass, of Ailsa, and of St. Kilda; and we have even heard this maintained by persons of good education, the notion having no doubt arisen from confounding the fables respecting the bernacle with the prodigious number of the gannets bred on those rocky islets. Some idea of their multitude may be formed from the fact, that the proprietor of the Bass is said to make 1307. per annum by them*, and from Martin's estimating the consumption of the inhabitants of St. Kilda alone at 22,600 of the young gannets, besides a countless number of eggs,which are preserved throughout the year in pyramidal stone buildings, closely covered with turft. This provision is procured at the hazard of the lives of the fowlers, who have to clamber on the rocks at a prodigious height over a raging sea, or to be lowered down to the nests from above, and, hanging in mid