THE HISTORY OF COTTON AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE 63
APPENDIX 97
INDEX 107
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIG. PAGE
THE “BAROMETZ,” OR “TARTARIAN LAMB.”--_After Joannes Zahn_
_Frontispiece_
1.--THE VEGETABLE LAMB PLANT.--_After Sir John Mandeville_ 3
2.--PORTRAIT OF THE “BAROMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.”--_After Claude
Duret_ 9
3.--ADAM AND EVE ADMIRING THE PLANTS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN. THE
“VEGETABLE LAMB” IN THE BACKGROUND.--_Fac-simile of the
Frontispiece of Parkinson’s “Paradisus”_ 19
4.--RHIZOME OF A FERN, SHAPED BY THE CHINESE TO REPRESENT A TAN-
COLOURED DOG, AND LAID BEFORE THE ROYAL SOCIETY BY SIR HANS SLOANE
AS A SPECIMEN OF THE “BAROMETZ,” OR “TARTARIAN LAMB.”--_From the
‘Philosophical Transactions,’ vol. xx., p. 861_ 25
5.--ROUGH MODEL OF A TAN-COLOURED DOG, SHAPED BY THE CHINESE FROM
THE RHIZOME OF A FERN, AND SUBMITTED TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY BY DR.
BREYN AS A SPECIMEN OF THE “SCYTHIAN VEGETABLE LAMB,” OR
BORAMETZ.--_From the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ No. 390_ 31
6.--THE “BORAMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.”--_From De la Croix’s
‘Connubia Florum’_ 37
7.--A COTTON-POD 61
PREFACE.
The fable of the existence of a mysterious “plant-animal” variously
entitled “_The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary_,” “_The Scythian Lamb_,” and
“_The Barometz_,” or “_Borametz_,” is one of the curious myths of the
Middle Ages with which I have been long acquainted. Until the year 1883,
not having given serious thought to it, or made it a subject of critical
examination, I had been content to accept as correct the explanation of
it now universally adopted; namely, that it originated from certain
little lamb-like toy figures ingeniously constructed by the Chinese from
the rhizome and frond-stems of a tree-fern, which, from its
identification with the object of the fable, has received the name of
_Dicksonia Barometz_. But during my researches in the works of ancient
writers when preparing the manuscript of my two books, ‘_Sea Monsters
Unmasked_,’ and ‘_Sea Fables Explained_,’ I came upon passages of old
authors which convinced me that these toy “lambs” made from ferns by the
Chinese had no more connexion with the story of “_The Vegetable Lamb_”
than the artificial mermaids so cleverly constructed by the Japanese
were the cause and origin of the ancient and world-wide belief in
mermaids. Subsequent investigations have confirmed this opinion.
I have found that all of these old myths which I have been able to trace
to their source have originated in a perfectly true statement of some
curious and interesting fact; which statement has been so garbled and
distorted, so misrepresented and perverted in repetition by numerous
writers, that in the course of centuries its original meaning has been
lost, and a monstrous fiction has been substituted for it. “Truth lies
at the bottom of a well,” says the adage; and in searching for the
origin of these old myths and legends, the deeper we can dive down into
the past the greater is the probability of our discovering the truth
concerning them. To obtain a clue to the identity of “_The Scythian
Lamb_” we must consult the pages of historians and philosophers who
lived and wrote from eighteen to sixteen centuries before Sir John
Mandeville published his version of the story; and, having there found
set before us the real “_Vegetable Lamb_” in all its truthful simplicity
and beauty, we shall be able to recognise its form and features under
the various disguises it was made to assume by the wonder-mongers of the
Middle Ages.
I venture to believe that the reader who will kindly follow my argument
(p. 42, _et seq._) will agree with me that the rumour which spread from
Western Asia all over Europe, and was a subject of discussion by learned
men during many centuries, of the existence of “a tree bearing fruit, or
seed-pods, which when they ripened and burst open were seen to contain
little lambs, of whose soft white fleeces Eastern people wove material
for their clothing,” was a plant of far higher importance to mankind
than the paltry toy animals made by the Chinese from the root of a fern,
of which gew-gaws only four specimens are known to have been brought to
this country. It seems to me clear and indisputable that the rumour
referred to the cotton-pod, and originated in the first introduction of
cotton and the fabrics woven from it into Eastern Europe.
It will be seen that the explanation of the process by which the
truthful report of a remarkable fact was in time perverted into the
detailed history of an absurd fiction is very easy and intelligible.
As this little book was originally intended for publication, like its
predecessors before-mentioned, as a hand-book in connection with the
Literary Department of the South Kensington Exhibitions, I have treated
in a separate chapter of the history of cotton, its use by ancient races
in Asia, Africa, and America, and its gradual introduction amongst the
nations of Europe. The various stages of its progress Westward were so
distinctly and intimately dependent on many remarkable events in the
world’s history, by which its advance was alternately retarded and
facilitated, that the annals of the “_vegetable wool_” which holds so
important a place amongst the manufacturing industries of Great Britain
are hardly less romantic than the fable of “_The Vegetable Lamb_,” which
was its forerunner.
HENRY LEE.
SAVAGE CLUB.
_May, 1887._
THE
VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY
A CURIOUS FABLE OF THE
COTTON PLANT.