As an example of the strange incapacity for making correct observation and the failure to record correctly things observed which are frequently exhibited by the most highly placed "men of education," as well as by uneducated peasants and fisher folk, we have the short paper entitled, "A Relation concerning Barnacles," by Sir Robert Moray--the first president of the Royal Society of London (from 1661 until its incorporation in 1662)--a very distinguished man, and an intimate friend of King Charles II. This paper was read to the society in 1661 and published in 1677 in vol. xii. of the "Philosophical Transactions." Sir Robert relates how he found on the coast a quantity of dead barnacles attached to a piece of timber, and that in each barnacle's shell was a bird. He writes: "This bird in every shell that I opened, as well the least as the biggest, I found so curiously and completely formed that there appeared nothing wanting, as to the external parts, for making up a perfect sea-fowl; every little part appearing so distinctly that the whole looked like a large bird seen through a concave or diminishing glass, colour and feature being everywhere so clear and near. The little bill like that of a goose, the eyes marked, the head, neck, breast, wings, tail and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish coloured, and the feet like those of other waterfowl--_to my best remembrance_. All being dead and dry, I did not look after the inward parts of them." If the reader will now look at Fig. 15, C, which represents the soft parts of a barnacle when the shells of one side are removed, he will see how far Sir Robert Moray must have been the victim--as so many people naturally are under such circumstances--of imagination and defective memory when he wrote this account. I have put into italics in the above quotation from his "Relation" his confession that he is writing, not with his specimens before him, but from remembrance of them. Moreover, he tells us, with admirable candour, that the specimens were dead and dry when he examined them! One could not desire a better justification for the motto adopted by the Royal Society, "Nullius in verba," and for the procedure upon which in its early days the Society insisted--namely, that at its meetings the members should "bring in" a specimen or an experiment, and not occupy time by mere relations and reports of marvels. It is necessary even at the present day to insist on such demonstration by those who urge us to accept as true their relations of mysterious experiences with ghosts, and their "conviction" that they have conversed with "discarnate intelligences." CHAPTER XV MORE AS TO THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE