the "berniculus," or "barnacle-goose," may be eaten on fast days. Max Müller's explanation of the origin of the story is too adventurous in its unsupported assumption that the particular goose associated with the story was peculiarly Irish, or that, in fact, any kind of goose was so. He also put aside the evidence of Father Damien (earlier than the Irish story of Giraldus) referring the goose-tree to an island in the Indies, and the report cited in the Oriental book the "Zohar." However plausible Max Müller's theory may have appeared, it absolutely crumbles and disappears in the presence of the Mykenæan pictures of "barnaculized" geese, and trees budding birds--two thousand years older than the Irish record, and nearly three thousand years earlier than the essay of the charming and persuasive professor. CHAPTER XVI SEA-SHELLS ON THE SEASHORE ANY hard coat or covering enclosing a softer material is called a "shell"--thus we speak of an egg-shell, a nut-shell, a bomb-shell, and the shell of a lobster. But there is a special and restricted use of the word to indicate as "true" and "real" shells the beautiful coverings made for their protection by the soft, mobile animals called Molluscs. These animals expand and contract first this and then that region of the body by squeezing the blood within it (by means of the soft muscular coat of the sac-like body) into one part or another in turn. There is not enough blood to distend the whole animal, and accordingly one part is swollen out and protrudes from the shell, whilst another shrinks as the blood is propelled here or there by the compressing muscular coat. These creatures are the Molluscs, a name which has come into general use (and has even served as the title for a stage-play), as well as being the zoologist's title for the great division of animals which they constitute.