Barnacle goose

“ It is a very handsome species, a vegetable-feeder, and excellent eating." Now, it would seem to be a very simple matter to end the story by saying that it was long believed that barnacle-geese had their origin in the barnacle-shells we have just referred to, but the case is more complex; the shells bearing the geese were believed to grow on trees. This belief, that the barnacle-shell is transformed into the barnacle-goose, was well established, as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and was referred to and contradicted by both Albertus Magnus and by Roger Bacon. ”

“ There is no remedy but to sail on, letting them grow as fast as they will, and removing them when port is reached. Norwegian sailors believe that the barnacle goose hatches out of the goose barnacle, and many have asserted that they have seen the young just on the point of flying out. ”

“ Here good-sized crabs and shrimps flee for refuge from larger foes, and feed upon their more minute brethren also seeking safety under the floating weed. Here the goose barnacle is found in great numbers attached to everything that floats. This is the animal which is such an enemy to shipmasters sailing from tropical ports. Although the vessel's bottom is scraped just before leaving port, young goose barnacles attach themselves in such numbers that, owing to their rapid growth, they seriously retard the ship's progress. ”

“ The Barnacle Goose is only a winter visitor of Great Britain. It breeds in the far north, in Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla, and probably, also, along the shores of the White Sea. There are generally some specimens of this prettily-marked goose in the gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park, London; and they thrive there, and become very tame. In the months of December and January these geese may often be seen hanging for sale in poulterers' shops ”

“ For which God's name be euer honored and praised." It is to be remarked that Gerard's description of the goose-progeny of the barnacle tree exactly corresponds with the appearance of the bird known to ornithologists as the "barnacle-goose"; and there can be no doubt that, skilled as was this author in the natural history lore of his day, there was no other feeling in his mind than that of firm belief in and pious wonder at the curious relations between the shells and their fowl-offspring. Gerard thus attributes the origin of the latter to the barnacles. ”

“ The real absurdity was the credulity of Gerarde and Harrison in supposing that the barnacle goose was really produced from the shell of the fish. Dr. Bullein not only believed this himself, but bestows the epithets, ignorant and incredulous on those who did not; and in the same breath he maintains that crystal is nothing more than ice. See his Bulwarke of defence, &c. 1562, Folio, fo. 12. Caliban's barnacle is the clakis or tree-goose. ”

“ As the "man of the mountain" is fixed to the ground by his navel-string, so the barnacle-goose is grown to a tree by its bill. It is hard to say whether it is an animal and must be slaughtered to be fit for food, or whether it is a plant and no ritual ceremony is necessary before eating it. ”

“ These geese are much larger than both the eider and the barnacle goose, and appear to be sufficiently strong to defend themselves against the fox. They commonly breed high up on some mossy or grassy oasis, among the stone mounds of the coast mountains, or on the summit of a steep strand escarpment in the interior of the fjords. During the moulting season the grey geese collect in flocks at the small fresh-water lakes along the coast. The flesh of this species of goose is finer than that of the common tame goose and has no trace of any train flavour. ”

“ The walrus-hunters sometimes call them "rapphoens"—partridges—a misleading name, which in 1873 induced me to land on the open coast south of Ice Fjord, where "rapphoens" were to be found in great numbers. On landing I found only moulting barnacle geese. The barnacle goose finds its food more on land and inland lakes than in the sea. Its flesh accordingly is free from the flavour of train oil and tastes well, except that of the female during the hatching season, when it is poor and tough. The eggs are better than the eider's. ”

“ This barnacle-goose tree was a great article of faith with our ancestors in the Middle Ages. Gerarde, for example, in his History of Plants gives an illustration of it in all good faith—a branch bearing barnacles and by its side a barnacle goose. Following, however, the plan we have adopted throughout of going directly to the fountain-head, Gerarde shall give us his own description of this wonder of Nature. We may, however, point out before doing so that the error arose from a near resemblance of two distinct words suggesting that there must be an identity of nature in the things so named. ”

“ Brent-goose, brent′-gōōs, n. a small species of wild goose, having the head, neck, long wing feathers, and tail black, the belly white, the rest slaty-gray—it visits the British coasts in winter.—Also Brant′-goose, or Brent barnacle, and often confounded with the barnacle goose. [Prob. branded = brindled.]
Bressummer. Same as Breastsummer (q.v. under Breast) . ”

“ The soft part within this shell, in old times, used to be mistaken for a little bird.
There is in England a well-known species of goose called the barnacle-goose. "It is a winter migrant on the east coast; its summer home, where it breeds, being the high latitudes of Northern Europe. ”

“ The goose barnacles, Anatifa, have a flexible peduncle. The Balanoidea, or sea acorns, like oysters, are rooted to the spot on which they rest in their infant days; without the power, like the goose barnacle, of swaying to and fro like a pendulum, be their resting-place what it may. ”

“ Barnacle Goose. There was a popular belief that it was born from a barnacle growing on wood, the plank of a boat, or a submerged tree trunk. Dr. Johnson’s first definition of Barnacle is “A bird like a goose, fabulously supposed to grow on trees.” The “currents” in l. 1 are literally a mountain stream. ”

“ Barnacle, bär′na-kl, n. a shellfish which adheres to rocks and the bottoms of ships: a companion who sticks closely.—n. Bar′nacle-goose, a species of wild goose belonging to the Northern seas, so called from a notion that they were produced from the barnacles mentioned. [O. Fr. bernaque—Low L. bernaca; by some referred to a supposed form pernacula, dim. of perna, a kind of shellfish; by others to a Celtic origin.] ”

“ Of þat frute I haue eten: This assertion seems to be due to the English translator. The normal French text has simply: et cest bien grant meruaille de ceo fruit, et si est grant oure [= oeuvre] de nature (MS. Royal 20 B. X, f. 70 b) .
147. the Bernakes: The barnacle goose—introduced here on a hint from Odoric—is a species of wild goose that visits the Northern coasts in winter. It was popularly supposed to grow from the shell-fish called 'barnacle', which attaches itself to floating timber by a stalk something like the neck and beak of a bird, and has feathery filaments not unlike plumage. ”

“ Gerard, who wrote a famous book on plants, called the Herbal, was a good observer, and yet he believed in the barnacle geese. People living on the coast of Lancashire told him all about them. Upon old and decayed timbers, so he writes, are found shells like mussels, but whitish and sharp-pointed; the inside of them is soft, like silk lace, but by degrees this takes the form of a bird, which when grown is larger than a duck, and smaller than a goose. ”

“ An extraordinary belief was long current that the barnacle, which is found adhering to the bottom of ships, would, when broken off, become a species of goose. Several old writers assert this, and Holinshed gravely declares, that "with his own eyes he saw the feathers of these barnacles hang out of the shell at least two inches." Giraldus Cambrensis gives similar ocular testimony. "Who," he says, "can marvel that this should be so? When our first parent was made of mud, can we be surprised that a bird should be born of a tree?" ”

“ God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. ”

“ Almost every one is acquainted with at least one kind of the Barnacle shells which were supposed to enclose the embryo of a goose, namely the small white conical hillocks which are found, in tens of thousands, adhering to stones, rocks, and old timber such as the piles of piers, and may be seen affixed to the shells of oysters and mussels in any fishmonger's shop. ”

“ The absurd idea, that the brent goose or barnacle derived its origin from this shell, was not confined to the illiterate; men of science, incautiously confiding in the bold assertions of the ignorant, appear to have given full credit to this truly curious hypothesis, and disseminated the knowledge of it in their writings. ”

“ In Browne's fourth letter to Merrett, by an error in the transcription, he is made by Wilkin to say that he kept twenty of these birds alive for five weeks; in the MS. it is clearly only two.
Barnacles [18] Brants Branta [wer struck out] are com̄on
[18] Barnacle and Brent Geese as we know them, the first by no means common here; the Wild Goose, probably Anser cinereus; the Scotch Goose (see Note 9) , probably the Gannet; and the Bergander, an old name for the Sheld-drake, as used by Turner in 1544, and derived from the Dutch Berg-eende, German Bergente ("Dict. Birds," p. 835) . ”

“ A—Lepas anatifera, L. Common Goose Barnacle. Living
B—Lepas pritchardi, Hall. Cainozoic. Victoria
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Cainozoic Lepadidae.—
The genus Lepas (the modern goose barnacles) is represented by isolated plates in the Cainozoic (Janjukian) limestones and marls of Waurn Ponds, and Torquay near Geelong: it also occurs in a stratum of about the same age, the nodule bed, at Muddy Creek, near Hamilton, Victoria (L. pritchardi, Fig. 116) . In New Zealand the gigantic cirripede, ?Pollicipes aucklandicus (Fig. 115 C) , occurs in the Motutapu beds. ”

“ Gr. ? ham Cf. F. bernacle, barnacle, E. barnacle a goose; and Ir. bairneach, barneach, limpet.] (Zo”l.) Any cirriped crustacean adhering to rocks, floating timber, ships, etc., esp. (a) the sessile species (genus Balanus and allies) , and (b) the stalked or goose barnacles (genus Lepas and allies) . See Cirripedia, and Goose barnacle.
Barnacle eater (Zo”l.) , the orange filefish. Ð Barnacle scale (Zo”l.) , a bark louse (Ceroplastes cirripediformis) of the orange and quince trees in Florida. The female scale curiously resembles a sessile barnacle in form.
Bar¶naÏcle, n. [See Bernicle.] ”

“ As fish-eaters they are often persecuted where coastal fishermen possess firearms, and thus are sensitive to increasing human influence on the coasts.
Two species of arctic geese need special attention. The emperor goose (Philacte canagica) is a Beringean endemic and lives in a very restricted area of both sides of this sea; its status (endangered?) is unknown to me. Since the black brant (Branta bernicla) is a long-range migrant, it is hunted as a game bird at its winter grounds, and subject to management measures. ”

“ One of the most curious fables regarding animals which can well be mentioned is that respecting the so-called "bernicle" or "barnacle geese," which by the naturalists and educated persons of the middle ages were believed to be produced by those little crustaceans named "barnacles." With the "barnacles" every one must be familiar who has examined the floating drift-wood of the sea-beach, or who has seen ships docked in a seaport town. A barnacle is simply a kind of crab inclosed in a triangular shell, and attached by a fleshy stalk to fixed objects. ”

“ The upland species (Anas Magellanica) is common, in pairs and in small flocks, throughout the island. They do not migrate, but build on the small outlying islets. This is supposed to be from fear of the foxes: and it is perhaps from the same cause that these birds, though very tame by day, are shy and wild in the dusk of the evening. They live entirely on vegetable matter. The rock goose, so called from living exclusively on the sea-beach (Anas antarctica) , is common both here and on the west coast of America, as far north as Chile. ”

“ Indeed, on remembering that there still survives, or till lately survived, the popular belief that barnacle-geese arise from barnacles—on learning that, even in the early transactions of the Royal Society, there is a paper describing a barnacle as showing faint traces of the young bird it is about to produce—it will be seen that only by advanced science has there been discriminated the natural organic transformations, from transformations which to ignorance seem just as likely. ”

“ The body is made of rings as are the bodies of insects. All the six pairs of legs are on the chest rings. Each leg has two joints, and a little branch like a fine fringe. The hard shelly cover of the barnacle is made of plates lapped together. When they are closed they look something like buds on trees, or young pine cones. When the fringes of the feet wave out between the edges of the shell-plates, it looks as if the buds were about to open into flower.
A barnacle is more like his far-off cousin Mr. Crab when he is little than when he is grown up. ”

“ A few Gray Lag Geese locally appear, chiefly on our eastern seaboard in winter, and it is more than probable that, normally, most of these birds are the individuals still continuing to inhabit the British Islands. These birds generally resort to the coast, frequenting sand-banks and low islands during the day, as a safe retreat in which to rest and sleep, coming landwards again at dusk to feed. This Goose, although gregarious during winter, seldom or never consorts with other species, although ready enough to mingle with its tame descendants on the stubbles and pastures. ”