Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the "Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray, who declared that he had seen within the barnacle shell, as through a concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings, tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing how-- "The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good witnesses." As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus, Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called _Bernaculæ_ from the Latin _perna_, the mediæval Latin _berna_; the birds are called _Hibernicæ_ or _Hiberniculæ_, abbreviated to _Berniculæ_. As their names seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good Irish story--a mere _canard_--with all the dignity of scientific, and all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live until the age of Newton. Specimens of _Lepadidæ_, prepared by Professor Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the _Anatifera_ could have supported the popular superstition which derived the _Bernicla_, the goose, from the _Bernicula_, the shell. Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river Lee, speaks of "Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"