We may begin our investigation by inquiring into some of the opinions which were entertained on this subject and ventilated by certain old writers.  Between 1154 and 1189 Giraldus Cambrensis, in a work entitled “Topographia Hiberniae,” written in Latin, remarks concerning “many birds which are called Bernacae:  against nature, nature produces them in a most extraordinary way.  They are like marsh geese, but somewhat smaller.  They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum.  Afterward they hang down by their beaks, as if from a seaweed attached to the timber, surrounded by shells, in order to grow more freely,” Giraldus is here evidently describing the barnacles themselves.  He continues:  “Having thus, in process of time, been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air.  They derive their food and growth from the sap of the wood or the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation.  I have frequently, with my own eyes, seen more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the seashore from one piece of timber, enclosed in shells, and already formed.”  Here, again, our author is speaking of the barnacles themselves, with which he naturally confuses the geese, since he presumes the Crustaceans are simply geese in an undeveloped state.  He further informs his readers that, owing to their presumably marine origin, “bishops and clergymen in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are not flesh, nor born of flesh,” although for certain other and theological reasons, not specially requiring to be discussed in the present instance, Giraldus disputes the legality of this practice of the Hibernian clerics.

In the year 1527 appeared “The Hystory and Croniclis of Scotland, with the cosmography and dyscription thairof, compilit be the noble Clerk Maister Hector Boece, Channon of Aberdene.”  Boece’s “History” was written in Latin; the title we have just quoted being that of the English version of the work (1540), which title further sets forth that Boece’s work was “Translait laitly in our vulgar and commoun langage be Maister Johne Bellenden, Archedene of Murray, And Imprentit in Edinburgh, be me Thomas Davidson, prenter to the Kyngis nobyll grace.”  In this learned work the author discredits the popular ideas regarding the origin of the geese.  “Some men belevis that thir clakis (geese) growis on treis be the nebbis (bills).  Bot thair opinoun is vane.  And becaus the nature and procreatioun of thir clakis is strange, we have maid na lytyll laboure and deligence to serche ye treuth and verite yairof, we have salit (sailed) 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 thair procreatioun than ony uthir thyng.”  According to Boece, then, “the nature of the seis” formed the chief element