Now, after this, can we wonder at the melancholy catalogue of human beings who have expiated the supposed crime of witchcraft at the stake on the testimony of their deluded and deluding prosecutors ? Here is a man of learning and of considerable accuracy in many points, the author of a valuable work containing much information, who gravely and deliberately, on the authority of two of the most acute of his senses, asserts a downright falsehood and courts investigation. He may moreover be acquitted of any intention to deceive ; but his mind was filled with previous assertions and preconceivod opinions, and his excited imagination, like that of the majority of the witnesses against the unfortunate witches, gave a colour and a form to all he saw and felt.
Gerard published this celebrated romance in 1636. If we now turn to Ray's edition of Willughby, published in 1678, we shall see what a progress bad been made towards truth, even in that short space of time. "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 [the catkins of the willow] falling into the sea ; or lastly, of a kind of sea-shells, the figures whereof Lobel, Gerard, and others have set forth, may be seen in Aldrovand, Sen nertus in his 113Tomnemata,' Michael Meyerus, who bath written an entire book concerning the tree-fowl, and many others. But that all these stories are false and fabulous I am confidently persuaded. Neither do these 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 phcenix, whose reputed original is without doubt fabulous) there is not any one example of equivocal or spontaneous generation. Among other animals indeed, the lesser and more imperfect, as for example many insects and Frogs, are commonly thought either to be of spontaneous original, or to come of different seeds and principles. But the greater animals and perfect in their kinds, such as is among birds the goose, no philosopher would ever admit to.be in this manner produced. Secondly, those shells in which they affirm these birds to ho 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, concerning which the reader may please to consult that curious naturalist Fabius Columna. These shells we ourselves have seen, once at Venice, growing in great abundance to the keel of an old ship; a second time in the Mediterranean Sea, growing to the back of a tortoiso we took between Sicily and Malta. Columna makes the shell-fish to be a kind
of Balanes marines. 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." Here we see the clouds that had obscured the subject nearly cleared away, though there is still a little lingering error in the tacit admission of the spontaneous generation of the frogs and insects.
It is no small praise to Belon and some others that, even in their early time, they treated this fable of the duck-bearing tree with con tempt. There has been much confusion in the nomenclature of this bird. Linnaeus considered it as the male of Antler erythropua (White Fronted Wild-Goose), and treated Anser Brenta (the Brent-Goose), and A. Bernicla as synonyms. Succeeding writers continued the mistake till Temminck and Bechstein, instead of restoring the namo given to it by the older ornithologists, called it Amer leucopsis, but did not refer the specific name Erythropus to the A nets albifi-ens of Gmelin and Latham.
The summer haunts of the Bernick reach high into northern lati tudes. Iceland, Spitzbergen, Greenland, Lapland, the north of ltuasia and of Amin, and Hudsons Bay, are recorded as its breeding places. Sir John Richardson notes it as accidental on the Saskatchewan (53" 54' N. Int.) as a passenger in spring and autumn, and gives the southern states of the North American Union as its winter quarters It visits Britain in the autumn, appearing in great numbers on the north-western coasts, and in the north of Ireland. On the eastern and southern shores of Britain it is comparatively rare, and the Brent Goose occupies its place.
The weight of a Deride is about five pounds, the length rather more than two feet, and the breadth about four and a half with the wings spread. Tho bill, about an inch and a half long, is black, with a reddish streak on each side, and between it and the eyes is a small black streak. Irides brown ; heed (to the crown), checks, and throat white ; the rest of the head, neck, and shoulders black. Upper part of the plumage marbled with blue, gray, black, and white ; belly and tail coverts white ; tail black ; flanks ashy gray; legs and feet dusky.
The eye-streak is much broader in the young of the year than in the adult ; the under parts are not of so pure a white, and the upper plumage is darker.
The flesh is excellent.