to believe it; so very prevalent is the prodigious and absurd with some
part of mankind. Among the more sensible and experienced Tartars, I
found they laughed at it as a ridiculous fable." Blood was said to flow
from it when cut or injured, a superstition which probably originated in
the fact that the fresh root when cut yields a tenacious gum like the
blood of animals. Dr. Darwin, in his "Loves of the Plants," adopts the
fable thus:--
"E'en round the pole the flames of love aspire,
And icy bosoms feel the sacred fire,
Cradled in snow, and fanned by arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz, the golden hair;
Rested in earth, each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends.
Crops of the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime,
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat a vegetable lamb."
Another curious fiction prevalent in olden times was that of the
barnacle-tree, to which Sir John Maundeville also alludes:--"In our
country were trees that bear a fruit that becomes flying birds; those that
fell in the water lived, and those that fell on the earth died, and these be
right good for man's meat." As early as the twelfth century this idea was
promulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis in his "Topographia Hiberniae;"
and Gerarde in his "Herball, or General History of Plants," published in
the year 1597, narrates the following:--"There are found in the north parts
of Scotland, and the isles adjacent, called Orcades, certain trees, whereon
do grow small fishes, of a white colour, tending to russet, wherein are
contained little living creatures; which shells, in time of maturity, do
open, and out of them grow those little living things which, falling into
the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnacles, in the north of
England brant-geese, and in Lancashire tree-geese; but the others that do
fall upon the land perish, and do come to nothing." But, like many other
popular fictions, this notion was founded on truth, and probably
originated in mistaking the fleshy peduncle of the barnacle (Lepas
analifera) for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula
for a tuft of feather. There were many versions of this eccentric myth,
and according to one modification given by Boëce, the oldest Scottish
historian, these barnacle-geese are first produced in the form of worms
in old trees, and further adds that such a tree was cast on shore in the
year 1480, when there appeared, on its being sawn asunder, a multitude
of worms, "throwing themselves out of sundry holes and pores of the
tree; some of them were nude, as they were new shapen; some had both