IT is clear that there was a widespread tradition known to the learned in the early centuries of the Christian era, according to which there existed in some distant Eastern land a tree which bore buds or fruits which became converted into birds. Connected with this, and perhaps really a part of it, there existed a tradition that marine "barnacles" gave birth to geese from within their shells, or are in some way converted into geese. The two stories were in some localities and narrations combined, though in others they were distinct. On the coast of Ireland the early missionaries of the Church (learned men acquainted with the traditions of their time) identified the migratory brent goose with the bird said to be produced by the barnacle; and elsewhere, on the Scottish coast, the barnacles were (it was reported) found growing on trees. There is no such resemblance between barnacles and brent geese as to have suggested to the Irish monks the regular and natural conversion of one into the other. It seems most probable that the learned churchmen knew the traditional story already before arriving in Ireland, and applied it to the barnacles and the geese which they discovered around them. Eventually the word "barnacle" without qualification was applied to the geese, as we see in Gerard's account given in the last chapter. Is there, it may be asked, anything further known as to such a tradition, and the place and manner of its origin? In the absence of such knowledge, an ingenious attempt was made by my old friend, Professor Max Müller, to account for the tradition by the similarity of the names, which he erroneously supposed had been given _independently_ to the barnacle and to the "Hibernian" goose. I will refer to this below, but now I will proceed to give the most probable solution of the mystery as to the tradition of the tree, the goose, and the barnacle. Its discovery is not more than twenty years old, and is due to M. Frederic Houssay, a distinguished French zoologist of the Ecole Normale, who published it in the "Revue Archeologique" in 1895. It has not hitherto been brought to the notice of English readers, and I shall therefore give a full account of it. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--Fanciful designs by Mykenæan artists, showing change of the cuttle-fish (octopus or "poulpe") into a bull's head and other shapes. a, Octopus drawn on a goblet from Crete, the arms reduced to two, the eyes detached. b and c, Bull's head variations of the octopus, from designs found at Koban in the Caucasus. d, Spiral treatment of the arms of the octopus (a pose actually seen in living specimens).