Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained Part 15

[80] I need hardly say that before the nacreous layer of the sh.e.l.l from which this animal takes its name is made visible, an outer deposit of dense calcareous matter has to be removed by hydrochloric acid: the pearly surface thus exposed is then easily polished.

[81] It is so interesting to most of us to know something of the early work of our greatest men, and of the tide in their affairs, which, taken at the flood, led on to fortune, that I hope I may be excused for referring to the period when the distinguished chief of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, the great comparative anatomist, the unrivalled palaeontologist, the ill.u.s.trious physiologist, the venerable and venerated friend of all earnest students, was beginning to attract the attention, and to receive the approbation of his seniors as a promising young worker.

In Messrs. Griffith and Pidgeon's Supplement to Cuvier's 'Mollusca and Radiata,' published in 1834, the treatise in question is thus mentioned: "We have much pleasure in referring to a most excellent memoir on _Nautilus pompilius_, by Mr. Owen, with elaborate figures of the animal, its sh.e.l.l, and various parts, published by direction of the Council of the College of Surgeons. The reader will find the most satisfactory information on the subject, and the scientific public will earnestly hope that the present volume will be the first of a similar series." This hope has been more than fulfilled.

Dean Buckland, in his 'Bridgewater Treatise,' wrote of this work: "I rejoice in the present opportunity of bearing testimony to the value of Professor Owen's highly philosophical and most admirable memoir--a work not less creditable to the author than honourable to the Royal College of Surgeons, under whose auspices the publication has been so handsomely conducted."

Mr. Owen's investigations confirmed his previous supposition that the Pearly Nautilus is inferior in its organisation to octopus, sepia, or any other known cephalopod; that it is not isolated, but that it recedes towards the gasteropods, to which belong the snail, the periwinkle, &c., and that in some of its characters its structure is a.n.a.logously related to the still lower _annulosa_, or worms. Mr. Owen was just about to start for Paris with the intention of presenting a copy of his book to his celebrated contemporary and friend, and of showing him his dissections of the Nautilus which had been the subject of his research, when he heard of Baron Cuvier's death. It must have been to him a great sorrow and a grievous disappointment.

The Pearly Nautilus, then, is a true cephalopod, in that it has its foot divided and arranged in segments around its head, but the form and number of these segments are very different from those of any other of its cla.s.s. Instead of there being eight, as in the argonaut and octopus, or ten, as in sepia and the calamaries, the Nautilus has about ninety projecting in every direction from around the mouth. They are short, round, and tapering, of about the length and thickness of the fingers of a child. Some of them are retractile into sheaths, and they are attached to fleshy processes (which might represent the child's hand), overlying each other, and covering the mouth on each side. They have none of the suckers with which the arms and tentacles of all the other cuttles are furnished, but their annulose structure, like the rings of an earthworm's body, gives them some little prehensile power. None of these numerous finger-like segments of the foot are flattened out like the broad membranous expansions of the argonaut, and, in fact, the Nautilus is without any members which can possibly be regarded as sails to hoist, or as oars with which to row. It has a strong beak, like the rest of the cuttles; but it has no ink-sac, for its sh.e.l.l is strong enough to afford it the protection which its two-gilled relatives have to seek in concealment.

The Pearly Nautilus usually creeps, like a snail, along the bed of the sea. It lives at the bottom, and feeds at the bottom, princ.i.p.ally on crabs; and, as Dr. S. P. Woodward says, in his 'Manual of the Mollusca,'

"perhaps often lies in wait for them, like some gigantic sea-anemone, with outspread tentacles." The shape of its sh.e.l.l is not well adapted for swimming, but it can ascend to the surface, if it so please, in the same manner as can all the cuttles--namely, by the outflow of water from its locomotor tube. The statement that it visits the surface of the sea of its own accord is at present, however, unconfirmed by observation.

But, if the Pearly Nautilus is the inferior and poor relation of the argonaut, it lives in a handsome house, and comes of an ancient lineage.

The Ammonites, whose beautiful whorled and chambered sh.e.l.ls, and the casts of them, are so abundant in every stratum, especially in the lias, the chalk, and the oolite, had four gills also. These Ammonites and the Nautili were amongst the earliest occupants of the ancient deep; and, with the Hamites, Turrilites, and others, lived upon our earth during a great portion of the incalculable period which has elapsed since it became fitted for animal existence, and in their time witnessed the rise and fall of many an animal dynasty. But they are gone now; and only the fossil relics of more than two thousand species (of which 188 were Nautili) remain to tell how important a race they were amongst the inhabitants of the old world seas. They and their congeners of the chambered sh.e.l.ls, however, left one representative which has lived on through all the changes that have taken place on the surface of this globe since they became extinct--namely, _Nautilus pompilius_, the Nautilus of the pearly sh.e.l.l--the last of the Tetrabranchs.

I need offer no apology for endeavouring to explain the difference between the Nautilus of the chambered sh.e.l.l and the argonaut with the membranous arms which it was supposed to use as sails, when Webster, in his great standard dictionary, describes the one and figures the other as one and the same animal; and when a writer of the celebrity of Dr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes also blends the two in the following poem, containing a sentiment as exquisite as its science is erroneous. I hope the latter distinguished and accomplished author, whose delightful writings I enjoy and highly appreciate, will pardon my criticism. I admit that the beauty of the thought might well atone for its inaccuracy, (of which the author is conscious,) were it not that the latter is made so attractive that truth appears harsh in disturbing it.

"THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS."

"This is the s.h.i.+p of pearl, which poets feign Sails the unshadowed main, The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings, In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl, Wrecked is the s.h.i.+p of pearl!

And every chambered cell, Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing sh.e.l.l, Before thee lies revealed, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his l.u.s.trous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its s.h.i.+ning archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn!

From the dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

'Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low vaulted past; Let each new temple, n.o.bler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown sh.e.l.l by life's unresting sea.'"

BARNACLE GEESE--GOOSE BARNACLES.

The belief that some wild geese, instead of being hatched from eggs, like other birds, grew on trees and rotten wood has never been surpa.s.sed as a specimen of ignorant credulity and persistent error.

There are two princ.i.p.al versions of this absurd notion. One is that certain trees, resembling willows, and growing always close to the sea, produced at the ends of their branches fruit in form like apples, and each containing the embryo of a goose, which, when the fruit was ripe, fell into the water and flew away. The other is that the geese were bred from a fungus growing on rotten timber floating at sea, and were first developed in the form of worms in the substance of the wood.

When and whence this improbable theory had its origin is uncertain.

Aristotle does not mention it, and consequently Pliny and aelian were deprived of the pleasure they would have felt in handing down to posterity, without investigation or correction, a statement so surprising. It is, comparatively, a modern myth; although we find that it was firmly established in the middle of the twelfth century, for Gerald de Barri, known in literature as Giraldus Cambrensis, mentions it in his 'Topographia Hiberniae,' published in 1187. Giraldus, who was Archdeacon of Brecknock in the reign of Henry II., and tried hard, more than once, for the bishopric of St. David's, the functions of which he had temporarily administered without obtaining the t.i.tle, was a vigorous and zealous reformer of Church abuses. Amongst the laxities of discipline against which he found it necessary to protest was the custom then prevailing of eating these Barnacle geese during Lent, under the plea that their flesh was not that of birds, but of fishes. He writes:--

"There are here many birds which are called Bernacae, which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese but smaller. They are produced from fir-timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it.

Afterwards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood, and are enclosed in sh.e.l.ls that they may grow the more freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the sh.o.r.e, enclosed in sh.e.l.ls and already formed. Their eggs are not impregnated _in coitu_, like those of other birds, nor does the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds on fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent, although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating flesh."

This fable of the geese appears, however, to have been current at least a hundred years before Giraldus wrote, for Professor Max Muller, who treats of it in one of his "Lectures on the Science of Language,"

amongst many interesting references there given, quotes a Cardinal of the eleventh century, Petrus Damia.n.u.s, who clearly describes, that version of it which represents the birds as bursting, when fully fledged, from fruit resembling apples.

It is a curious fact that these Barnacle geese have troubled the priesthood of more than one creed as to the instructions they should give to the laity concerning the use of them as food. The Jews--all those, at least, who maintain a strict observance of the Hebrew Law--eat no meat but that of animals which have been slaughtered in a certain prescribed manner; and a doubt arose amongst them at the period we refer to, whether these geese should be killed as flesh or as fish. Professor Max Muller cites Mordechai,[82] as asking whether these birds are fruits, fish, or flesh; that is, whether they must be killed in the Jewish way, as if they were flesh. Mordechai describes them as birds which grow on trees, and says, "the Rabbi Jehuda, of Worms (who died 1216) used to say that he had heard from his father, Rabbi Samuel, of Speyer (about 1150), that Rabbi Jacob Tham, of Rameru (who died 1171), the grandson of the great Rabbi Ras.h.i.+ (about 1140), had decided that they must be killed as flesh."

[82] Riva, 1559, leaf 142.

Pope Innocent III. took the same view; for at the Lateran Council, in 1215, he prohibited the eating of Barnacle geese during Lent. In 1277, Rabbi Izaak, of Corbeil, determined to be on the safe side, forbade altogether the eating of these birds by the Jews, "because they were neither flesh nor fish."

Michael Bernhard Valentine,[83] quoting Wormius, says that this question caused much perplexity and disputation amongst the doctors of the Sorbonne; but that they pa.s.sed an ordinance that these geese should be cla.s.sed as fishes, and not as birds; and he adds, that in consequence of this decision large numbers of these birds were annually sent to Paris from England and Scotland, for consumption in Lent. Sir Robert Sibbald[84] refers to this, and says that Normandy was the locality from which the French capital was reported to be princ.i.p.ally supplied; but that in fact the greater number of these geese came from Holland. The date of this edict is not given.

[83] 'Historia Simplicium,' lib. iii. p. 327.

[84] Prodrom. Hist. Nat. Scot. parts 2, lib. iii. p. 21, 1684.

Professor Max Muller says that in Brittany, Barnacle geese are still allowed to be eaten on Fridays, and that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns may give permission to people out of his diocese to eat these birds at his table.

In Bombay, also, where fish is prohibited as food to some cla.s.ses of the population, the priests call this goose a "sea-vegetable," under which name it is allowed to be eaten.

Various localities were mentioned as the breeding-places of these arboreal geese. Gervasius of Tilbury,[85] writing about 1211, describes the process of their generation in full detail, and says that great numbers of them grew in his time upon the young willow trees which abounded in the neighbourhood of the Abbey of Faversham, in the county of Kent, and within the Archiepiscopate of Canterbury. The bird was there commonly called the _Barneta_.

[85] Otia Imperialia, iii. 123.

Hector Boethius, or Boece, the old Scottish historian, combats this version of the story. His work, written in Latin, in 1527, was translated into quaint Scottish in 1540, by John b.e.l.l.e.n.den, Archdeacon of Murray. In his fourteenth chapter, "Of the nature of claik geis, and of the syndry maner of thair procreatioun, and of the ile of Thule," he says:--

"Restis now to speik of the geis generit of the see namit clakis.

Sum men belevis that thir clakis growis on treis be the nebbis. Bot thair opinioun is vane. And becaus the nature and procreatioun of thir clakis is strange we have maid na lytyll laubore and deligence to serche ye treuth and verite yairof, we have salit throw ye seis quhare thir clakis ar bred, and I fynd be gret experience, that the nature of the seis is mair relevant caus of thir procreatioun than ony uther thyng."

From the circ.u.mstances attending the finding of "ane gret tree that was brocht be alluvion and flux of the see to land, in secht of money pepyll besyde the castell of Petslego, in the yeir of G.o.d ane thousand iiii.

hundred lx.x.xx, and of a see tangle hyngand full of mussill sch.e.l.lis,"

brought to him by "Maister Alexander Galloway, person of Kynkell," who knowing him to be "richt desirus of sic uncouth thingis came haistely with the said tangle," he arrives at the conclusion, by a process of reasoning highly satisfactory and convincing to himself, that,

"Be thir and mony othir resorcis and examplis we can not beleif that thir clakis ar producit be ony nature of treis or rutis thairof, but allanerly be the nature of the Oceane see, quhilk is the caus and production of mony wonderful thingis. And becaus the rude and ignorant pepyl saw oftymes the fruitis that fel of the treis (quhilkis stude neir the see) convert.i.t within schort tyme in geis, thai belevit that thir geis grew apon the treis hingand be thair nebbis sic lik as appillis and uthir frutis hingis be thair stalkis, bot thair opinioun is nocht to be sustenit. For als sone as thir appillis or frutis fallis of the tre in the see flude thay grow first wormeetin. And be schort process of tyme are alterat in geis."

In describing the bird thus produced, Boethius declares that the male has a sharp, pointed beak, like the gallinaceous birds, but that in the female the beak is obtuse as in other geese and ducks.

According to other authors, this wonderful production of birds from living or dead timber was not confined to England and Scotland.

Vincentius Bellovacensis[86] (1190-1264) in his 'Speculum Naturae,' xvii.

40, states that it took place in Germany, and Jacob de Vitriaco (who died 1244) mentions its occurrence in certain parts of Flanders.

[86] For this quotation and the following one I am indebted to Professor Max Muller's Lecture before referred to.

Jonas Ramus gives a somewhat different version of the process as it occurs in Norway. He writes:[87] "It is said that a particular sort of geese is found in Nordland, which leave their seed on old trees, and stumps and blocks lying in the sea; and that from that seed there grows a sh.e.l.l fast to the trees, from which sh.e.l.l, as from an egg, by the heat of the sun, young geese are hatched, and afterwards grow up; which gave rise to the fable that geese grow upon trees."

[87] 'Chorographical Description of Norway,' p. 244.

But, strange to say, if any painstaking enquirer, wis.h.i.+ng to investigate the matter for himself, went to a locality where it was said the phenomenon regularly occurred, he was sure to find that he had literally, "started on a wild-goose chase," and had come to the wrong place. This was the experience of aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., who complained that miracles will always flee farther and farther away; for when he was on a visit (about 1430) to King James I., of Scotland,[88] and enquired after the tree which he most eagerly desired to see, he was told that it grew much farther north, in the Orkney Islands.