The Folk-lore of Plants

Du Bartas thus describes the various transformations of this bird:-- "So, slowe Boôtes underneath him sees, In th' ycie iles, those goslings hatcht of trees; Whose fruitful leaves, falling into the water, Are turn'd, they say, to living fowls soon after. So, rotten sides of broken ships do change To barnacles; O transformation change, 'Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull, Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull." Meyer wrote a treatise on this strange "bird without father or mother," and Sir Robert Murray, in the "Philosophical Transactions," says that, "these shells are hung at the tree by a neck, longer than the shell, of a filmy substance, round and hollow and creased, not unlike the windpipe of a chicken, spreading out broadest where it is fastened to the tree, from which it seems to draw and convey the matter which serves for the growth and vegetation of the shell and the little bird within it. In every shell that I opened," he adds, "I found a perfect sea-fowl; the little bill like that of a goose, the eyes marked; the head, neck, breast, wing, tail, and feet formed; the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped, and the feet like those of other water-fowl." The Chinese have a tradition of certain trees, the leaves of which were finally changed into birds.