Alvin F. Harlow

“ THE barnacle goose, which is a wild goose quite common in northern Europe, was given its name centuries ago because of a curious and inexplicable superstition; which was nothing less than that barnacles, the tiny shell-fish which attach themselves to ships' bottoms or floating timbers, eventually turn into geese! Barnacles are curious little mollusks which fasten themselves by a fleshy peduncle usually to wooden ships, and sometimes in such quantities that the ship must be put in dry dock and the hull scraped. ”

“ The belief that certain human beings were changed or changed themselves at times into lower animals has prevailed since ancient days not only in Europe but in many other parts of the world. The animal into which persons were most often transformed was a wolf. In ancient Greece a man named Lycaon was said to have been turned into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh. ”

“ During that century many peasants, influenced by the mania, imagined themselves wolves. There was clear proof of many cases in which human beings, especially children, had been killed and eaten by men who fancied themselves wolves. ”