Obs. exc. Hist. A name for the barnacle-goose, formerly believed to be produced from a tree, in the form of the barnacle (cirriped): see BARNACLE sb.2 1.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, III. clxvii. 1391. Foules whom we call Barnakles,… and in Lancashire tree Geese.
1622. Drayton, Poly-olb., xxvii. 304. Those … trees … send from their stocky bough, A soft and sappy Gum, from which those Tree-geese grow, Call’d Barnacles by vs.
1655. H. More, Antid. Ath., App. xiii. § 5. He also adds a story of another sort of Tree-geese which he gathered in their shells from an old rotten tree upon the shore of our English Coast.
1768. Pennant, Zool., II. 452. These are the birds that … were believed to be generated out of wood, or rather a species of shell … often found sticking to the bottoms of ships,… and were called Tree-geese.
1835. Penny Cycl., IV. 312/2.
