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Re: Where do Barnacle Geese come from?

From:

Leo Weigant

Reply-To:

Leo Weigant

Date:

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:29:00 -0500

	Dear Bill & Janet:
		There's some sort of serendipity afoot in this.   I had been musing
	to myself only yesterday about this strange name, wondering about its
	derivation . . . and, lo and behold, [MDOSPREY] delivers right on cue.

		Your sources did remind me that as late as the 18th century
	Samuel Johnson, the great savant and sometime dictionary writer,
	passed along as current the belief ~ in the absence of any proof,
	much less theory of seasonal migration, that swallows, say, spent
	the winter buried in the muddy bottom of the Thames, just as they'd
	noticed toads, tadpoles, etc. emerging from mud in the spring-time
	thaw.      Their logic, actually, was not so flawed, but their  
scientific
	data gathering capabilities were pitiful . . . by our standards.

		Thanks a bunch for your learned dialogue.

		Leo
	

On Jan 17, 2012, at 4:55 PM, Janet Millenson wrote:

> From "The Ornithology of Francis Willughby" (by Willughby and Ray),  
> 1678, concerning the "Bernacle":
>
> "What is reported concerning the rise and original of these birds,  
> to wit, that they are bred of rotten wood, for instance, of the  
> Masts, Ribs, and Planks of broken Ships half putrified and  
> corrupted, or of certain Palms of trees falling into the Sea, or  
> lastly, of a kind of Sea-shels, the figures whereof [various  
> writers] have set forth, may be seen in [various books]. But that  
> all these stories are false and fabulous I am confidently  
> perswaded. Neither do there want sufficient arguments to induce the  
> lovers of truth to be of our opinion, and to convince the  
> gainsayers. For in the whole Genus of Birds (excepting the Phoenix  
> whose reputed original is without doubt fabulous) there is not any  
> one example of equivocal or spontaneous generation. ... Secondly,  
> those shells in which they affirm these Birds to be bred, and to  
> come forth by a strange metamorphosis, do most certainly contain an  
> Animal of their own kind, and not transmutable into any other  
> thing... Thirdly, that these Geese do lay Eggs after the manner of  
> other Birds, sit on them, and hatch their Young, the Hollanders in  
> their Northern Voyages affirm themselves to have found by experience."
>
> (All spelling as in the original.)
>
> Janet Millenson
> Potomac, MD (Montgomery County)
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> "Look at the birds!" -- Pascal the parrot
>
>
> On 1/17/2012 4:37 PM, Bill Hubick wrote:
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> An e-mail discussion with a local Chestertown homeowner led to my  
>> re-finding this gem about the origins of Barnacle Geese and Goose  
>> Barnacles:
>>
>> On Goose Barnacles:
>>
>> "In the days before it was realised that birds migrate, it was  
>> thought that Barnacle Geese, Branta leucopsis, developed from this  
>> crustacean, since they were never seen to nest in temperate  
>> Europe, hence the English names "goose barnacle", "barnacle goose"  
>> and the scientific name Lepas anserifera (Latin anser = 'goose').  
>> The confusion was prompted by the similarities in color and shape.  
>> Because they were often found on driftwood, it was assumed that  
>> the barnacles were attached to branches before they fell in the  
>> water. The Welsh monk, Giraldus Cambrensis, made this claim in his  
>> Topographia Hiberniae. Since barnacle geese were thought to be  
>> 'neither flesh, nor born of flesh', they were allowed to be eaten  
>> on days when eating meat was forbidden by religion." (http:// 
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_barnacle)
>>
>> Beautiful.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> Bill Hubick
>> Pasadena, Maryland
>> 
>> http://www.billhubick.com
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Janet Millenson
> 
> 301-983-9337
>
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