Jews in the Middle Ages were divided as to whether these barnacle geese should be killed as flesh or as fish. Pope Innocent III. took the view that they were flesh, for at the Lateran Council in 1215 he prohibited the eating of them during Lent. In 1277 Rabbi Izaak of Corbeil forbade them altogether to Jews, on the ground that they were neither fish nor flesh. Both Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon derided the myth, but in general it seems to have been accepted with unquestioning faith. Sebastian Munster, in his _Cosmographia Universalis_ (1572), tells us that Pope Pius II. when on a visit to Scotland was most anxious to see these geese, but was told that they were to be found only in the Orkney Islands. Sebastian believed in them himself, for he wrote of them:-- "In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit conglomerated of leaves, and this fruit when in due time it falls into the water beneath it is endowed with new life and is converted into a living bird which they call the tree-goose.... Several old cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention the tree and it must not be regarded as fictitious as some new writers suppose."[84] Even Hector Boece, in his _Hystory and Croniklis of Scotland_ (1536), took the myth seriously, but in his opinion "the nature of the seis is mair relevant caus of their procreation than ony uther thyng." William Turner accepted the myth and gives as his evidence what had been told him by an eye-witness, "a theologian by profession and an Irishman by birth, Octavian by name," who promised him that he would take care that some growing chicks should be sent to him! In later times we find that Gaspar Schott (_Physica Curiosa Sive Mirabilia Naturæ et Artis_, 1662, lib. ix. cap. xxii. p. 960) quotes a vast number of authorities on the subject and then demonstrates the absurdity of the myth. Yet in 1677 Sir Robert Moray read before the Royal Society "A Relation concerning Barnacles," and this was published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, January-February 1677-8. Among illustrations of the barnacle geese, that in de l'Obel's _Stirpium Historia_ (1571) depicts the tree without the birds. Gerard shows the tree with the birds; in Aldrovandus leaves have been added to the tree and there is also an illustration showing the development of the barnacles into geese.