THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.
Amongst the curious myths of the Middle Ages none were more extravagant
and persistent than that of the “Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,” known also
as the “Scythian Lamb,” and the “Borametz,” or “Barometz,” the latter
title being derived from a Tartar word signifying “a lamb.” This “lamb”
was described as being at the same time both a true animal and a living
plant. According to some writers this composite “plant-animal” was the
fruit of a tree which sprang from a seed like that of a melon, or gourd;
and when the fruit or seed-pod of this tree was fully ripe it burst open
and disclosed to view within it a little lamb, perfect in form, and in
every way resembling an ordinary lamb naturally born. This remarkable
tree was supposed to grow in the territory of “the Tartars of the East,”
formerly called “Scythia”; and it was said that from the fleeces of
these “tree-lambs,” which were of surpassing whiteness, the natives of
the country where they were found wove materials for their garments and
“head-dress.” In the course of time another version of the story was
circulated, in which the lamb was not described as being the fruit of a
tree, but as being a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem
rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus
suspended above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal
to bend downward, and browze on the herbage within its reach. When all
the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem
withered and the lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones,
blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though
no other carnivorous animal would attack it. Many other details were
given concerning it, which will be found mentioned in the following
pages. This legend met with almost universal credence from the
thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and, even then, only gave place
to an explanation of it as absurd and delusive as itself. Following the
outline sketched in the preface, I shall, in this chapter, lay before
the reader the story of the “Barometz” or “Vegetable Lamb,” as related
by various writers, and shall then give my reasons for assigning to the
fable an interpretation very different from that which has been hitherto
accepted as the true one.
The story of a wonderful plant which bore living lambs for its fruit,
and grew in Tartary, seems to have been first brought into public notice
in England in the reign of Edward III., by Sir John Mandeville, the
“Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and
travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countreis, to se
mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and
diverse shap of men and of beistis.” In the 26th chapter of the book in
which he “wrot and telleth all the mervaile that he say,” and which he
dedicated to the King, he treats of “the Countreis and Yles that ben
beȝond the Lond of Cathay, and of the Frutes there”; and amongst the
curiosities he met with in the dominions of the “Cham” of Tartary he
mentions the following:--
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE VEGETABLE LAMB PLANT.
_After Sir John Mandeville._
This plate illustrates that version of the Fable by which the “Vegetable
Lamb” is represented as contained within a fruit, or seed-pod, which,
when ripe, bursts open, and discloses the little lamb within it.]
“Now schalle I seye ȝou semyngly of Countrees and Yles that ben beȝonde
the Countrees that I have spoken of. Wherefore I seye you in passynge be
the Lond of Cathaye toward the high Ynde, and towards Bacharye, men
passen be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldilhe: that is a fair Contree.
And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as though it weren Gowrdes: and
whan thei ben rype men kutten hem ato, and men fynden with inne a
lytylle Best, in Flesche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle
Lomb with outen Wolle. And Men eten both the Frut and the Best; and that
is a great Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eaten; alle thoughe it were
wondirfulle, but that I knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his
Werkes.”[1]
[1] ‘The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knt.’ See
Appendix A.
Sir John Mandeville appears to have never previously heard of this
strange plant, but reports of its existence under various phases may be
traced back, as we shall presently see, to a date at least eighteen
hundred years earlier than that of his mention of it. As it is in the
works of these older writers that we shall find the long-sought key of
the mystery, we will set them aside for the present and follow the
growth and dissemination of the fable.
Claude Duret, of Moulins, who, in his ‘_Histoire Admirable des Plantes_
(1605),’ devotes to it a chapter entitled “The Boramets of Scythia, or
Tartary, true Zoophytes or plant-animals; that is to say, plants living
and sensitive like animals,” therein says:--
“I remember to have read some time ago in a very ancient Hebrew book
entitled in Latin the _Talmud Ierosolimitanum_, and written by a Jewish
Rabbi Jochanan, assisted by others, in the year of salvation 436, that a
certain personage named Moses Chusensis (he being a native of Ethiopia)
affirmed, on the authority of Rabbi Simeon, that there was a certain
country of the earth which bore a zoophyte, or plant-animal, called in
the Hebrew ‘_Jeduah_.’ It was in form like a lamb, and from its navel
grew a stem or root by which this zoophyte or plant-animal was fixed,
attached, like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the ground,
and, according to the length of its stem or root, it devoured all the
herbage which it was able to reach within the circle of its tether. The
hunters who went in search of this creature were unable to capture or
remove it until they had succeeded in cutting the stem by well-aimed
arrows or darts, when the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth
and died. Its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and
incantations in the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he was
instantly seized with a spirit of divination, and endowed with the gift
of prophecy.”
As I was unable to find in the Latin translation of the Talmud of
Jerusalem the passage mentioned by Claude Duret, and was anxious to
ascertain whether any reference to this curious legend existed in the
Talmudical books, I sought the assistance of learned members of the
Jewish community, and, amongst them, of the Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler,
Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations of the British Empire.
He most kindly interested himself in the matter, and wrote to me as
follows:--
“It affords me much gratification to give you the information you
desire on the Borametz. In the Mishna _Kilaim_, chap. viii. § 5 (a
portion of the Talmud), the passage occurs:--‘Creatures called _Adne
Hasadeh_ (literally, “lords of the field”) are regarded as beasts.’
There is a variant reading,--_Abne Hasadeh_ (stones of the field). A
commentator, Rabbi Simeon, of Sens (died about 1235), writes as follows
on this passage:--‘It is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is a
human being of the mountains: it lives by means of its navel: if its
navel be cut it cannot live. I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meir, the
son of Kallonymos of Speyer, that this is the animal called ‘_Jeduah_.’
This is the ‘_Jedoui_’ mentioned in Scripture (lit. _wizard_, Leviticus
xix. 31); with its bones witchcraft is practised. A kind of large stem
issues from a root in the earth on which this animal, called ‘_Jadua_,’
grows, just as gourds and melons. Only the ‘_Jadua_’ has, in all
respects, a human shape, in face, body, hands, and feet. By its navel it
is joined to the stem that issues from the root. No creature can
approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them.
Within the tether of the stem it devours the herbage all around. When
they want to capture it no man dares approach it, but they tear at the
stem until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies.’ Another
commentator, Rabbi Obadja of Berbinoro, gives the same explanation, only
substituting--’They aim arrows at the stem until it is ruptured,’ &c.
The author of an ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia (Venice, 1705), gives
an interesting description of this animal. In Part IV. c. 10, page 786,
he mentions the Borametz found in Great Tartary. He repeats the
description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds what he has found in ‘A New Work
on Geography,’ namely, that ‘the Africans (_sic_) in Great Tartary, in
the province of Sambulala, are enriched by means of seeds like the seeds
of gourds, only shorter in size, which grow and blossom like a stem to
the navel of an animal which is called _Borametz_ in their language,
i.e. ‘_lamb_,’ on account of its resembling a lamb in all its limbs,
from head to foot; its hoofs are cloven, its skin is soft, its wool is
adapted for clothing, but it has no horns, only the hairs of its head,
which grow, and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half a cubit
and more. According to those who speak of this wondrous thing, its taste
is like the flesh of fish, its blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as
long as there is herbage within reach of the stem, from which it derives
its life. If the herbage is destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies
away. It has rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf,
which seeks to destroy it.’ The author concludes by expressing his
belief, that this account of the animal having the shape of a lamb is
more likely to be true than that it is of human form.”
We have an interesting record of another journey into Tartary,
undertaken almost simultaneously with that of Sir John Mandeville, by
Odoricus of Friuli, a Minorite friar belonging to the monastery of
Utina, near Padua. The exact date of his departure on his travels is not
mentioned, but he returned home in 1330, and the history of his
adventures and observations[2] was written in the month of May of that
year--thus taking precedence by about thirty years of the narrative of
the old English traveller.
[2] ‘The Journall of Frier Odoricus of Friuli, one of the order of the
Minorites, concerning strange things which he saw amongst the Tartars
of the East.’--‘Hakluyt Collection of Early Voyages,’ vol. ii. 1809.
See Appendix B.
Odoricus, describing his visit to the country of the “Grand Can,”
says:--“I heard of another wonder from persons worthy of credit; namely,
that in a province of the said Can, in which is the mountain of
Capsius[3] (the province is called ‘Kalor’), there grow gourds, which,
when they are ripe, open, and within them is found a little beast like
unto a young lamb, even as I myself have heard reported that there stand
certain trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea bearing fruits like unto a
gourd, which at a certain time of the year do fall into the water and
become birds called Bernacles; and this is true.”
[3] Probably an error of transcription for “Caspius.” The mountain of
Caspius (now Kasbin) is about eighty miles due south of the Caspian
Sea, and in Persian territory, near Teheran.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--PORTRAIT OF THE “BAROMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.”
_After Claude Duret._]
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the “Scythian Lamb” was made
a subject of investigation and argument by some of the most celebrated
writers of that period.
Fortunio Liceti, Professor of Philosophy at Padua, writing in 1518,[4]
gives his complete credence to the story of the little beast like a lamb
found within a fruit-pod when it bursts from over-ripeness; and besides
the above passage from Odoricus quotes another, by which it would appear
that the worthy friar afterwards himself saw this botanical curiosity,
and described it as being “as white as snow.” I have been unable to find
this paragraph in the Hakluyt edition of Odoricus’s travels.
[4] ‘_De Spontaneo Viventium Ortu_,’ lib. 3, cap. 45.
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, however, in his ‘_Historia Naturæ_’ (Antwerp,
1605), also quotes these two passages, and in exactly the same words. He
probably copied them from Liceti, and not from the original.
Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein, who, in 1517 and 1526, was the
ambassador of the Emperors Maximilian I. and Charles V. to the “Grand
Czard, or Duke of Muscovy,” in his ‘Notes on Russia,’[5] gives further
details of this “vegetable-animal.” He writes:--“In the neighbourhood
of the Caspian Sea, between the rivers Volga and Jaick, formerly dwelt
the kings of the Zavolha, certain Tartars, in whose country is found a
wonderful and almost incredible curiosity, of which Demetrius
Danielovich, a person in high authority, gave me the following account;
namely, that his father, who was once sent on an embassy by the Duke of
Muscovy to the Tartar king of the country referred to, whilst he was
there, saw and remarked, amongst other things, a certain seed like that
of a melon, but rather rounder and longer, from which, when it was set
in the earth, grew a plant resembling a lamb, and attaining to a height
of about two and a half feet, and which was called in the language of
the country ‘Borametz,’ or ‘the little Lamb.’ It had a head, eyes, ears,
and all other parts of the body, as a newly-born lamb. He also stated
that it had an exceedingly soft wool, which was frequently used for the
manufacturing of head-coverings. Many persons also affirmed to me that
they had seen this wool. Further, he told me that this plant, if plant
it should be called, had blood, but not true flesh: that, in place of
flesh, it had a substance similar to the flesh of the crab, and that its
hoofs were not horny, like those of a lamb, but of hairs brought
together into the form of the divided hoof of a living lamb. It was
rooted by the navel in the middle of the belly, and devoured the
surrounding herbage and grass, and lived as long as that lasted; but
when there was no more within its reach the stem withered, and the lamb
died. It was of so excellent a flavour that it was the favourite food of
wolves and other rapacious animals. For myself,” adds the Baron,
“although I had previously regarded these Borametz as fabulous, the
accounts of it were confirmed to me by so many persons worthy of
credence that I have thought it right to describe it; and this with the
less hesitation because I was told by Guillaume Postel,[6] a man of much
learning, that a person named Michel, interpreter of the Turkish and
Arabic languages to the Republic of Venice, assured him that he had seen
brought to Chalibontis (now Karaboghaz), on the south-eastern shore of
the Caspian Sea, from Samarcand and other districts lying towards the
south, the very soft and delicate wool of a certain plant used by the
Mussulmans as padding for the small caps which they wear on their shaven
heads, and also as a protection for their chests. He said, however, that
he had not seen the plant, nor knew its name, except that it was called
‘Smarcandeos,’ and was a zoophyte, or plant-animal. The numerous
descriptions given to him,” he added, “differed so little that he was
induced to believe that there was more truthfulness in this matter than
he had supposed, and to accept it as a fact redounding to the glory of
the Sovereign Creator, to whom all things are possible.”
[5] ‘_Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii_,’ 1549. See Appendix C.
[6] Author of ‘_Liber de Causis, seu de Principiis et Originibus
Naturæ_,’ &c.
Shortly after the publication of the above narrative by Sigismund von
Herberstein, and probably in allusion to it, Girolamo Cardano, of Pavia,
carefully discussed the phenomenon in question in his work ‘_De Rerum
Naturâ_,’[7] printed at Nürnberg in 1557. He endeavoured to expose the
absurdity of the statements made concerning this “animal-plant,” and
explained the physical impossibility of its existence in the manner
described. He argued that if it had blood it must have a heart, and that
the soil in which a plant grows is not fitted to supply a heart with
movement and vital heat. He also pointed out that embryo animals,
especially, require warmth for their development from the _ovum_, which
they could not obtain if raised from a seed planted in the earth,
demonstrating clearly enough that no warm-blooded animal could exist
thus organically fastened to the earth. In reply, however, to a possible
question suggested by himself, why there should be no plant-animal on
land, seeing that there are zoophytes in the sea, he, with the weakness
and indecision which were innate in his character, admitted that “where
the atmosphere was thick and dense there might, perhaps, be a plant
having sensation, and also imperfect flesh, such as that of mollusks and
fishes.”
[7] Lib. vi. cap. 22.
This weak point in his argument laid him open to the criticism of his
relentless enemy, Julius Cæsar Scaliger. Always on the watch to wound
and harass Cardano with cutting satire and irritating gibes, this
caustic persecutor lost no time in making his attack. In one of his
“_Exercitationes_”[8] he thus personally addressed the object of his
sneering disparagement:--
[8] ‘_Exotericarum Exercitationum_,’ lib. xv., “_De Subtilitate_”; _ad
Hieronymum Cardanum Exercit._ 181, cap. 29. Frankfort, 1557. See
Appendix D.
“You may regard as beyond ridicule this wonderful Tartar plant. The most
renowned of the Tartar hordes of the present day, by its reputation, its
antiquity, and its nobility, is that of the Zavolha. These people sow a
seed like that of the melon, but rather smaller, from which springs and
grows out of the earth a plant which they call ‘Borametz,’ _i.e._ ‘the
Lamb.’ This plant grows to the height of three feet in the likeness of a
real lamb, having feet, hoofs, ears, and a head perfect with the
exception of horns, instead of which the plant has hairs in the form of
horns. Its skin is soft and delicate, and is used in Tartary for
head-gear. The internal pulp is said to be like the flesh of the
cray-fish, and to have an agreeable flavour; but if an incision be
made, real blood flows from it. The root or stalk which rises from the
earth is attached to the navel of the lamb, and (which is more
remarkable) whilst the plant is surrounded with herbage it lives as does
a lamb, but as soon as it has consumed all within its reach it withers
and dies. This does not happen by the arrival of the plant at any
definite period of its growth, for it has been found by experiment that
if the grass around it be removed it perishes. Another most curious
circumstance connected with it is that wolves will eat it with avidity,
though no other carnivorous animals will attack it. This,” says
Scaliger, still apostrophizing Cardano, “is merely a little sauce and
seasoning to your allusion to the fable of the Lamb; but I would like to
know from you how four distinct legs and their feet can be produced from
one stem.”
It is very remarkable that this dissertation of Scaliger, which is
really a keen satire on Cardano, and a sarcastic repetition of his
version of the fable with ironical comments thereon, has been almost
invariably taken as serious, and regarded as an expression of his entire
belief in the “Scythian Lamb,” as described. Of all subsequent writers
on the subject, Deusingius[9] seems to have been the only one who
clearly perceived Scaliger’s intention and meaning. Hence, many profound
believers in the myth have claimed as their champion one who would have
derided them for their credulity.
[9] Antonius Deusingius, Professor of Medicine, and Rector of the
University of Groningen, in his ‘_Fasciculus Dissertationum
Selectorum_,’ p. 598, printed in 1660, declares his own utter
disbelief in this animal-vegetable monstrosity, and after quoting
Scaliger, thus writes of him:--”_Hæc equidem Scaliger, qui tamen ne
serio historiam narrare credatur quam ipse revera pro fabulosa habet,
nequaquam vero approbat, ut perperam de eo refert Sennert._”--_Hyp.
Physic._ 5, cap. 8.
Claude Duret, for example, whose implicit faith in the marvellous
zoophyte nothing could shake, quotes verbatim in its defence the remarks
of “le grand Jules César Scaliger,” and asks[10] triumphantly,--
[10] ‘_Histoire admirable des Plantes_,’ p. 322.
“Who cannot see plainly that Cardano, after having long doubted, and
after having adduced philosophical arguments drawn from the works of
Aristotle and other eminent writers, felt himself obliged and condemned
to confess that in a place filled with heavy and dense air (such as is
Tartary) the Borametz--true plant-animals--might exist as described, as
well as sponges, ‘sea-nettles,’ and ‘sea-lungs,’ which every one knows
are true zoophytes, or animal-plants.”
After this amusing assumption that the air of Tartary possesses the
“weight” and “density” necessary for the production of plant-animals,
Duret quotes from Sir John Mandeville’s book in the language in which it
was originally written--the Romanic--the passage which I have extracted
from the old English version of the enterprising knight’s ‘Voiage and
Travailes,’ and also cites, in confirmation of the prodigy, the account
given of it by the Baron Von Herberstein. He then strongly expresses his
own belief that--
“Of all the strange and marvellous trees, shrubs, plants and herbs which
Nature, or, rather, God himself, has produced, or ever will produce in
this Universe, there will never be seen anything so worthy of admiration
and contemplation as these ‘Borametz’ of Scythia, or Tartary,--plants
which are also animals, and which browze and eat as quadrupeds.... If I
did not entirely believe this I would denounce it as fabulous, instead
of accepting it as a fact; but those who are in the habit of daily
studying good and rare books, printed and in manuscript, and who are
endowed with great wisdom and understanding, know that there is no
impossibility in Nature, _i.e._ God himself, to whom be all the honour
and glory!”
Besides the authors already quoted, and others who merely copied the
narratives of their predecessors, Guillaume de Saluste, the Sieur du
Bartas, accepted as authentic the story of the Vegetable Lamb. In his
poem “_La Semaine_,” published in 1578, in which the first few days of
the existence of all terrestrial things are described reverently and
with considerable power, he represents this plant as one of those which
excited the astonishment of the newly-created Adam as he wandered on the
first day of the second week through the Garden of Eden, the earthly
Paradise in which he had been placed.
“Or, confus, il se perd dans les tournoyements,
Embrouillées erreurs, courbez desvoyements,
Conduits virevoultez, et sentes desloyales
D’un Dedale infiny qui comprend cent Dedales,
Clos non de romarins dextrement cizelez
En hommes, my-chevaux, en courserots seelez,
En escaillez oyseaux, en balènes cornues,
Et mille autres façons de bestes incogneues,
Ains de vrays animaux en la terre plantez,
Humant l’air des poulmons, et d’herbes alimentez,
Tels que les Boramets, qui chez les Scythes naissent
D’une graine menues, et des plantes repaissent;
Bien que du corps, des yeux, de la bouche, et du nez,
Ils semblent des moutons qui sont naguières naiz.
Ils le seroient du vray, si dans l’alme poictrine
De terre ils n’enfonçoient une vive raçine
Qui tient à leur nombril, et tombe le meme jour
Quils ont brouttè le foin qui croissoit à l’entour,
O, merveilleux effect de dextre divine,
La plante a chair et sang, l’animal a raçine,
La plante comme en rond de soymême se meut,
L’animal a des pieds, et si marcher ne peut:
La plante est sans rameaux, sans fruict, et sans feuillage,
L’animal sans amour, sans sexe, et vif lignage;
La plante a belles dents, paist son ventre affamè
Du fourrage voisin, l’animal est sémè.”
Joshua Sylvester, the admiring translator of Du Bartas,[11] gives the
following version of the above lines:--
[11] ‘Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Workes, translated and
dedicated to the King’s most excellent Maiestie by Joshua Sylvester,
London. 1584.’
“Musing, anon through crooked walks he wanders,
Round winding rings, and intricate meanders.
False-guiding paths, doubtful, beguiling, strays,
And right-wrong errors of an endless maze;
Nor simply hedged with a single border
Of rosemary cut out with curious order
In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-horses,
And thousand other counterfeited corses;
But with true beasts, fast in the ground still sticking
Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking,
Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred
Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed;
Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes,
Of new-yeaned lambs have full the form and guise,
And should be very lambs, save that for foot
Within the ground they fix a living root
Which at their navel grows, and dies that day
That they have browzed the neighbouring grass away.
Oh! wondrous nature of God only good,
The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood.
The nimble plant can turn it to and fro,
The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe,
The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit,
The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute:
The plant with plants his hungry paunch doth feede,
Th’ admired beast is sowen a slender seed.”
About the middle of the seventeenth century very little belief in the
story of the “Scythian Lamb” remained amongst men of letters, although
it continued to be a subject of discussion and research for at least
a hundred and fifty years later.
[Illustration: FIG. 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”_]
Athanasius Kircher, Professor of Mathematics at Avignon, who wrote[12]
in 1641, after following the error of his predecessors of quoting
Scaliger as a believer in the myth, says:--
[12] ‘_Magnes; sive de arte magneticâ opus tripartitum_,’ p. 730.
“Some authors have regarded it as an animal, some as a plant; whilst
others have classed it as a true zoophyte. In order not to multiply
miracles, we assert that it is a plant. Though its form be that of a
quadruped, and the juice beneath its woolly covering be blood which
flows if an incision be made in its flesh, these things will not move
us. It will be found to be a plant.”
This unwavering prediction has been fulfilled. But the story had to pass
through many vicissitudes of acceptance and disbelief before this
decision of Kircher was unanimously admitted to be correct. It seems to
have been the fate of this curious fable, through the whole period of
its history, that no sooner has a ray of some author’s common sense
penetrated the mist of superstition by which it was surrounded than it
has been again befogged by the ignorant credulity of the next writer on
the subject.
Jans Janszoon Strauss, a Dutchman, better known as Jean de Struys, who
travelled through many countries, and amongst them Tartary, from 1647 to
1672, describes[13] this vegetable wonder. But he was an uneducated and
credulous man, and his account of it is little more than a repetition of
the errors and fallacies of former centuries concerning it, rendered
still more incomprehensible by his having confused with its “very white
down, as soft as silk,” the Astrachan lamb-skins, which were then, and
are still, a well-known article of commerce. He says:--
[13] ‘_Voyages de Jean de Struys en Moscovie, en Tartarie, et en
Perse_,’ chap. xii. p. 167. Amsterdam. 1681. Also an English
translation, “done out of Dutch,” by John Morrison. London. 1684. See
Appendix E.
“On the west side of the Volga is a great dry and waste heath, called
the Step. On this heath is a strange kind of fruit found, called
‘Baromez’ or ‘Barnitsch,’ from the word ‘Boran,’ which is “a Lamb” in
the Russian tongue, because of its form and appearance much resembling a
sheep, having head, feet and tail. Its skin is covered with a down very
white and as soft as silk. The Tartars hold this in great esteem, and it
is sold for a high price. I have myself paid five or six roubles for one
of these skins, and doubled my money when I sold it again. The greater
number of persons have them in their houses, where I have seen many.
That which caused me to observe it with greater attention was that I had
seen one of these fruits among the curiosities in the house of the
celebrated Mr. Swammerdam, in Amsterdam, whose museum is full of the
rarest things in Nature from distant and foreign lands. This precious
plant was given to him by a sailor who had been formerly a slave in
China. He found it growing in a wood, and brought away sufficient of its
skin to make an under-waistcoat. The description he gave of it did very
much agree with what the inhabitants of Astrachan informed me of it. It
grows upon a low stalk, about two and a half feet high, some higher, and
is supported just at the navel. The head hangs down, as if it pastured
or fed on the grass, and when the grass decays it perishes: but this I
ever looked upon as ridiculous; although when I suggested that the
languishing of the plant might be caused by some temporary want of
moisture, the people asseverated to me by many oaths that they have
often, out of curiosity, made experience of that by cutting away the
grass, upon which it instantly fades away. Certain it is that there is
nothing which is more coveted by wolves than this, and the inward parts
of it are more congeneric with the anatomy of a lamb than mandrakes are
with men. However, what I might further say of this fruit, and what I
believe of the wonderful operations of a secret sympathy in Nature, I
shall rather keep to myself than aver, or impose upon the reader with
many other things which I am sensible would appear incredible to those
who had not seen them.”
The next traveller, in order of date, who made the Tartarian Lamb the
object of his investigations was Dr. Engelbrecht Kaempfer, who, in 1683,
accompanied an embassy to Persia, and was appointed Surgeon to the Dutch
East India Company two years later. He reported, on his return, that he
had searched “_ad risum et nauseam_” for this “zoophyte feeding on
grass,” that there was nothing in the country where it was believed to
grow that was called “Borametz,” except the ordinary sheep, and that all
accounts of a sheep growing upon a plant were mere fiction and fable.
“The word ‘Borametz,’” he says,[14] “is a corruption of the Russian
‘Boranetz,’ in Polish ‘Baranak,’ the diminutive of which, ‘Baran,’ is
Sclavonic. In such a case it signifies ‘a sheep.’ But,” he continues,
“there is in some of the provinces near the Caspian Sea a breed of sheep
totally different from those with which we are commonly acquainted, and
highly valued for the elegance of the skin, which is used in various
articles of clothing by the Tartars and Persians. For the magnates and
the rich who desire a material superior to that worn by the general
population, the skins of the youngest lambs are preserved, the fleeces
of these being much softer that those of the older ones, and the younger
the animal from which they are taken the more costly are they.” He then
refers to the barbarous custom of killing the ewes before the time of
natural parturition to obtain possession of the immature fleece of the
unborn lamb, and says, correctly, that the earlier the stage of
pregnancy in which this operation is performed the finer and softer is
the fur of the fœtal skin, and the lighter and closer are the little
curls for which it is chiefly prized. The pelt, also, is so thin that it
is scarcely heavier than a membrane, and, in drying, it frequently
shrinks so as to lose all similitude to the skin of a lamb, and assumes
a form which might lead the ignorant and credulous to believe that it
was a woolly gourd. He, therefore, conjectures that some of these dried
and shrunken skins may have been placed in museums as examples of the
fleece of the “Tartarian Lamb,” under the supposition that they were of
vegetable origin.
[14] ‘_Amœnitatum Exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum fasciculi_,’
x., lib. 3, obs. 1. Lemgo, 1712. Kaempfer’s MSS. and collections were
acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, and were deposited in the British Museum.
Kaempfer’s suggestions were ingenious, though his theory was erroneous.
But, although he rather impeded than assisted in the correct
identification of the object of discussion, he, at least, helped to
discredit the myth, which he declared to be one of those “received with
favour by the superstitious, and which when once they have found a
writer to describe them, however incorrectly, please the many, obtain
numerous adherents, and become respectable by age.”
[Illustration: FIG. 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._]
An important chapter in the history of this curious fiction was reached
when, in 1698, Sir Hans Sloane[15] laid before the Royal Society an
object which has ever since been generally regarded as a specimen of the
strange natural production about which so much mystery had existed,
so many outrageous stories had been told, and on which so much learned
discussion had been expended. His description of it is printed in the
Society’s Transactions, and is as follows:--
[15] Philosophical Transactions, vol. xx. p. 861; and Lowthorp’s
Abridgment of the Phil. Trans. vol. ii. p. 649.
“The figure (fig. 4) represents what is commonly, but falsely, in India,
called ‘the Tartarian Lamb,’ sent down from thence by Mr. Buckley.[16]
This was more than a foot long, as big as one’s wrist, having seven
protuberances, and towards the end some foot-stalks about three or four
inches long, exactly like the foot-stalks of ferns, both without and
within. Most part of this was covered with a down of a dark yellowish
snuff colour, some of it a quarter of an inch long. This down is
commonly used for spitting of blood, about six grains going to a dose,
and three doses pretended to cure such a hæmorrhage. In Jamaica are many
scandent and tree ferns which grow to the bigness of trees, and have
such a kind of _lanugo_ on them, and some of the capillaries have
something like it. It seemed to be shaped by art to imitate a lamb, the
roots or climbing parts being made to resemble the body, and the extant
foot-stalks the legs. This down is taken notice of by Dr. Merret at the
latter end of Dr. Grew’s Mus. Soc. Reg. by the name of ‘Poco Sempie,’ a
‘golden moss,’ and is there said to be a cordial. I have been assured by
Mr. Brown, who has made very good observations in the East Indies, that
he has been told by those who lived in China that this down or hair is
used by them for the stopping of blood in fresh wounds, as cob-webs are
with us, and that they have it in so great esteem that few houses are
without it; but on trials I have made of it, though I may believe it
innocent, yet I am sure it is not infallible.”
[16] This specimen evidently came from China; for I find a record that
at the date of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper “Mr. Buckley, Chief Surgeon at
Fort St. George, in the East Indies, presented to the Royal Society a
cabinet containing Chinese surgical and other instruments and
simples.”
Sir Hans Sloane had, it is true, clearly perceived the nature of the
specimen sent to the Royal Society by Mr. Buckley, and had correctly
identified it as a portion of one of the arborescent ferns; but on the
question whether he had discovered the right interpretation of the
puzzling enigma I shall have more to say presently. The object figured
seems to have been regarded by many of his contemporaries as so
insufficient to meet the requirements of the oft-told story of the
plant-animal, and so unsatisfactory an explanation of it, that every one
who subsequently had an opportunity of visiting Tartary still felt it to
be his duty to make enquiries concerning the famous prodigy of that
country.
Accordingly, we find that John Bell, of Autermony, availed himself of
the opportunity afforded him by a diplomatic journey to Persia,[17] in
1715-1722, to endeavour, whilst in Tartary, to obtain authentic
information respecting the “Vegetable Lamb.” He found that nothing was
known of it in the country where it was supposed to be indigenous, and
thus writes of it:--
[17] ‘Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to various parts of Asia,
in 1716, 1719, 1722, &c., by John Bell, of Autermony. Dedicated to the
Governor, Court of Assistants, and Freemen of the Russia Company.
London. 1764.’ See Appendix F.
“Before I leave Astracan, it may be proper to rectify a mistaken opinion
which I have observed to occur in grave German authors, who, in treating
of the remarkable things of this country relate that there grows in this
desart, or stepp adjoining to Astracan, in some plenty, a certain shrub
or plant called in the Russian language ‘Tartasky Borashka,’ _i.e._
‘Tartarian Lamb,’ with the skins of which the caps of the Armenians,
Persians, Tartars, &c., are faced. They also write that the ‘Tartashky
Borashka’ partakes of animal, as well as vegetative life, and that it
eats up and devours all the grass and weeds within its reach. Though it
may be thought that an opinion so very absurd could find no credit with
people of the meanest understanding, yet I have conversed with some who
were much inclined to believe it, so very prevalent is the prodigious
and absurd with some part of mankind. In search of this wonderful plant
I walked many a mile accompanied by Tartars who inhabit these desarts;
but all I could find out were some dry bushes, scattered here and there,
which grow on a single stalk with a bushy top of a brownish colour: the
stalk is about eighteen inches high, the top consisting of sharp prickly
leaves. It is true that no grass or weeds grow within the circle of its
shade--a property natural to many other plants, here and elsewhere.
After a careful enquiry of the more sensible and experienced among the
Tartars, I found they laughed at it as a ridiculous fable.”
Bell further says:--
“In Astracan they have large quantities of lamb-skins, grey and black,
some waved and others curled, all naturally and very pretty, having a
fine gloss, especially the waved, which at a small distance appear like
the richest watered tabby:[18] they are much esteemed, and are much used
for the lining of coats and the turning up of caps, in Persia, Russia,
and other parts. The best of these are brought from Bucharia, China, and
the countries adjacent, and are taken from the ewe’s belly after she
hath been killed, or the lamb is killed immediately after it is lambed,
for such a skin is equal in value to the sheep. The Kalmuks and those
Tartars who inhabit the desert in the neighbourhood of Astracan have
also lamb-skins which are applied to the same purpose, but the wool of
these being rougher and more hairy, they are inferior to those of
Bucharia and China both in gloss and beauty, and also in the dressing;
consequently in value. I have known one single lamb-skin from Bucharia
sold for five or six shillings sterling, when one of these would not
yield two shillings.”
[18] A rich watered silk: from the French “_tabis_”; Italian,
“_tabi_”; Persian, “_retabi_.”
Bell had sufficient discrimination to see that these Astracan lamb-skins
were in no way connected with the fable of the “Borametz,” and thus
avoided the error of Kaempfer, who regarded them as having given rise to
the reports of the existence of that marvellous “animal-plant.”
The Abbé Chappe-d’Auteroche, during his visit to Tartary,[19] about half
a century later than John Bell, sought for the “Scythian Lamb” with
equal earnestness and with similar want of success.
[19] ‘Voyage en Sibérie,’ Paris. 1768.
Long, however, before the result of the investigations of these two
travellers had been made known, a second manipulated fern-root, similar
to that described by Sir Hans Sloane, had been subjected to the scrutiny
of another keen and scientific observer.
[Illustration: FIG. 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.”
_From the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ No. 390._]
In September, 1725, Dr. John Philip Breyn, of Dantzic, addressed to the
Royal Society of London an important communication in Latin on this
subject,[20] in which he expressed his complete disbelief in the old
story, and described a specimen of the “Borametz” (as he believed it
to be) which had fallen into his hands, and which had led him,
independently, to the same conclusion as that arrived at by Sir Hans
Sloane, of whose observations, he says, he was unaware when his own
memoranda were written. Commencing by quoting the maxim, “_Non fingendum
sed inveniendum quid Natura faciat aut ferat_,” he urges upon all who
search for the hidden treasures of Nature, or who desire to discover her
secrets, to bear in mind that golden axiom that “the works and
productions of Nature should be discovered, not invented,” and remarks
that, if the older writers had adhered to this, Natural History, great
and honourable in itself, would not have been tarnished by so many silly
fables like that of the “Scythian Lamb.” He directs attention to the
fact that none of those who have described this plant-animal are able to
say that they ever saw it growing; quotes Kaempfer’s interpretation of
the origin of the report, namely the Astrachan lamb-skins of commerce,
and hesitates to regard the object in his possession as the key of the
problem. That he had grave and sufficient reasons for his doubts upon
this point will be seen from his interesting description of the
curiosity referred to. He says:--
[20] ‘_Dissertiuncula de Agno Vegetabili Scythico, Borametz vulgo
dicto._’ Phil. Trans., vol. xxxiii. p. 353, 1725; and also in Martyn’s
Abridgment of the Phil. Trans., vol. vi. p. 317.
“A certain learned and observant man, passing through our city on his
return from a journey through Muscovy, enriched my museum with, amongst
other natural curiosities, one of these ‘Scythian Lambs,’ which he
declared to be the genuine Borametz. It was about six inches in length,
and had a head, ears, and four legs. Its colour was that of iron-rust,
and it was covered all over with a kind of down, like the fibres of
silk-plush, except upon the ears and legs, which were bare, and were of
a somewhat darker tawny hue. On careful examination of it, I discovered
that it was not an animal production, nor yet a fruit, but either the
thick creeping root, or the climbing stem, of some plant, which by
obstetric art had acquired the form of a quadruped animal. For the four
legs, which looked as if the feet had been cut off from them, were so
many stalks which had supported leaves, as were also those which formed
the ears, and which more nearly resembled horns. The fibres emerging
from these, by which, like other plants, this root or stalk had conveyed
nutriment, left no doubt upon this point. Close inspection also showed
that one of the front legs had been artificially inserted, and that the
head and neck were not of one continuous substance with the body, but
had been very cleverly and neatly joined on to it. In fact, this root,
or stem, had been skilfully manipulated into the form of a lamb in the
same artful manner as the little figures of men, which, it was said,
shrieked and dropped human blood when drawn from the ground, were formed
from the roots of the mandragore and bryony.”
Dr. Breyn added that there remained in his mind some doubt as to the
plant from which this burlesque of nature and art was fabricated, until
the similarity of its ferruginous silky fibres to those of some of the
capillaries suggested the thought that it must be a portion of some
exotic fern. As to the particular species to which it belonged he was
unable to pronounce an authoritative opinion, but, hoping in the course
of time to receive more certain information concerning it, he would
merely say that he believed it was of a peculiar species found in
Tartary, and up to that date undescribed.
Dr. Breyn’s confirmation of Sir Hans Sloane’s identification of the
“Scythian Lamb” as the stem or rootlet of a fern artificially and
cleverly manipulated was a crushing blow to the already weakened fable.
Unfortunately, however, the conclusion thus arrived at was utterly
misleading, though it not only satisfied his contemporaries, but has
ever since--even to the present day--been universally accepted as the
correct interpretation of the problem. The injurious result was, that,
as the question appeared to have been set at rest, enquiry ceased, and
for nearly sixty years afterwards no more was heard of the “Vegetable
Lamb.”
Towards the close of the century two eminent botanists, who were, of
course, well acquainted with the specimens that had been described by
Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn, were constrained in writing of the poetry
of their science to make the legendary “Borametz” their theme.
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in 1781, contributed to the literature of the
subject the following lines[21]:--
[21] ‘The Botanic Garden.’ A poem in two parts; with philosophical
notes. London. 1781.
“E’en round the Pole the flames of love aspire,
And icy bosoms feel the secret fire,
Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle Borametz, thy golden hair;
Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime;
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
And seems to bleat--a ‘vegetable lamb.’”
Dr. Erasmus Darwin appears to have bestowed “golden hair” upon his
Borametz, to assimilate it to the fern-root toys that were regarded as
its prototypes; but as the fern of which they were made is a native of
Southern China, and as no author has described the lamb-plant as being
found in a cold climate, his authority and his motive for locating it in
an arctic region are alike inexplicable.
Dr. De la Croix, the other botanical author above referred to, extolled,
in 1791, the fabulous animal-plant in a Latin poem[22] which Bishop
Atterbury characterized as “excellent, and approaching very near to the
versification of Virgil’s ‘Georgics.’”
[22] ‘Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata.’ Bath. 1791.
“Qui Caspia sulcant
Æquora, sive legant spumosa Boristhenis ora
Sive petant Asiam velis, et Colchica regna,
Hinc atque inde stupent visu mirabile monstrum:
Surgit humo Borames. Præcelso in stipite fructus
Stat quadrupes. Olli vellus. Duo cornua fronte
Lanea, nec desunt oculi; rudis accola credit
Esse animal, dormire die, vigilare per umbram,
Et circum exesis pasci radicitus herbis:
Carnibus Ambrosiæ sapor est, succique rubentes
Posthabeat quibus alma suum Burgundia Nectar;
Atque loco si ferre pedem Natura dedisset,
Balatu si posset opem implorare voracis
Ora lupi contra, credas in stirpe sedere
Agnum equitem, gregibusque agnorum albescere colles.”
As this has not been “done into English” (to use an old phrase), I
venture to offer the following translation of it:--
“The traveller who ploughs the Caspian wave
For Asia bound, where foaming breakers lave
Borysthenes’ wild shores, no sooner lands
Than gazing in astonishment he stands;
For in his path he sees a monstrous birth,
The Borametz arises from the earth:
Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit,
It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,
And from its brows two woolly horns arise.
The rude and simple country people say
It is an animal that sleeps by day
And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,
To feed on grass within its reach around.
The flavour of Ambrosia its flesh
Pervades; and the red nectar, rich and fresh,
Which vineyards of fair Burgundy produce
Is less delicious than its ruddy juice.
If Nature had but on it feet bestowed,
Or with a voice to bleat the lamb endowed,
To cry for help against the threat’ning fangs
Of hungry wolves; as on its stalk it hangs,
Seated on horseback it might seem to ride,
Whit’ning with thousands more the mountain side.”
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE “BORAMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.”
_From De la Croix’s ‘Connubia Florum.’_
The central figure is a copy of Zahn’s picture of the fabulous
plant-animal; the other two are taken from fern-root specimens supposed
to be “Vegetable Lambs.”]
We must now leave the poetical view of the subject, and come to facts.
The substance of which the artificial animals exhibited by Sir Hans
Sloane and Dr. Breyn were constructed is the long root-stock of a fern
of the genus _Dicksonia_, of which there are from thirty to thirty-five
species, varying greatly in size, in their mode of growth, and in the
cutting of their fronds. Some of them, such as _D. antarctica_, a native
of Australia and New Zealand, often seen in our greenhouses, are
tree-like in habit, having stems from ten to forty feet in height, and
fronds two or three yards in length, and two feet or more across; whilst
others have root-stocks creeping along the surface of the ground. The
genus is most fully represented in tropical America and Polynesia: one
species extends as far north as the United States and Canada, and
another was introduced into this country from St. Helena. In some
species, such as _D. Molluccensis_, from Java, the stems are furnished
with strong hooked prickles; in others they are densely clad at the base
with a thick coat of yellow-brown hairs, which shine almost like
burnished gold. The stems of _D. Sellowiana_, from tropical America, are
so thickly clad with long fibrous hairs, changing to brown or nearly
black, that it has been said they precisely resemble the thighs of the
howling monkeys.[23]
[23] See ‘European Ferns,’ by James Britten, F.L.S.; with coloured
illustrations from Nature, by Dr. Blair, F.L.S. Cassell. London.--A
work full of information on the culture, classification, and history
of ferns. I am indebted to it for many of the details here given of
the economic value of ferns.
The species of _Dicksonia_ which has been supposed to have given origin
to the fable of the “Scythian Lamb” has, from that circumstance,
received the name of _Barometz_. It was formerly known as _Cibotium
glaucescens_. It was introduced into cultivation in conservatories in
this country about the year 1830, and was shortly afterwards described
as _Cibotium barometz_, but the genus _Cibotium_ is now generally united
with _Dicksonia_. Its long caudex, or root-stock, creeps over the
surface of the ground in the same manner as that of the better known
“Hare’s-foot” fern, _Davallia Canariensis_, and this is covered with
long silky hairs, or scales, which look something like wool when old and
dry. These hairs or scales have been sometimes used as a styptic in
Germany, and also, very commonly, in China, as related to Sir Hans
Sloane by Dr. Brown. The similar hairs of other species of _Dicksonia_,
natives of the Sandwich Islands, are exported to the extent of many
thousands of pounds weight annually under the name of “Pulu,” and are
used in the stuffing of mattrasses, cushions, &c. The hairs of _D.
culcita_ are similarly utilised in Madeira. No more than two or three
ounces of hair are yielded by each plant, and it is reckoned that about
four years must elapse before another gathering can be obtained.
The rhizomes and stems of many ferns abound in starch, and have a
commercial value, either as medicine or food. The soft mucilaginous pith
of _Cyathea medullaris_, one of the large tree-ferns of New Zealand, was
formerly eaten by the natives. It is of a reddish colour, and, when
baked, acquires a somewhat pungent flavour. In New Zealand ferns seem to
be in some repute for their edible properties, for the large scaly
rhizomes of _Marattia fraxinea_, and those of another fern, _Pteris
esculenta_, nearly allied to our common bracken, _P. aquilina_, are also
eaten by the Maoris. The natives bake them in ashes, peel them with
their teeth, and eat them with meat, as we do bread; and sometimes pound
them between stones, in order to extract the nutritious matter, the
woody part being rejected as useless. In Nepaul, the rhizomes of
_Nephrolepis tuberosa_ are similarly prepared for food; and in New
Caledonia the mucilaginous matter of _Cyathea vieillardii_ is obtained
from incisions made in the stem, or at the base of the fronds. The
succulent fronds of the little water-fern, _Ceratopteris thalictroides_,
are boiled and eaten as a vegetable by the poorer classes in the Indian
Archipelago. The young shoots of the handsome tree-fern, _Angiopteris
evecta_, are eaten in the Society Islands, and its large rhizome, which
is in great part composed of mucilage, yields, when dried, a kind of
flour. In the same islands the young fronds of _Helminthostachys
limulata_, the “Balabala” of the Fiji Islands, are eaten in times of
scarcity; and the soft scales covering the _stipes_ of the fronds are
used by the white settlers for stuffing pillows and cushions in
preference to feathers, because they do not become heated, and are thus
more comfortable in a sultry climate. In New South Wales, the thick
rhizome of _Blechnum cartilagineum_ is much eaten by the natives. It is
first roasted and then beaten, so as to break away the woody fibre: it
is said to taste like a waxy potato.
By skilful treatment the inhabitants of Southern China occasionally
converted the thick root-stock of one of these tree-ferns, “_Dicksonia
barometz_,” into a rough semblance of a quadruped, which quadruped, by a
foregone conclusion, was supposed to be a lamb. They removed entirely
the fronds that grew upward from the rhizome, excepting four, and these
four they trimmed down until only about four inches of each stalk was
left. The object thus shaped being turned upside down, the root-stock
represented the body of the animal, and was supported by the four
inverted stalks of the fronds, as upon four legs. If the specimen had an
insufficient number of stalks growing from it to make the four legs,
others were artificially and neatly affixed to it; ears were similarly
provided, and, if necessary, the trunk was fitted with a head and neck
made from another root-stock.
So far, well! The identification of the material of which these
imitations of four-legged animals were fashioned as the rhizome and
frond-stalks of a tree-fern is complete, and perfectly satisfactory.
But, having given to these root-stocks of tree-ferns the full benefit of
an acknowledgment of the economic uses that have been made of them in
various ways and in different localities, and having frankly stated the
still accepted theory of their connection with the myth of the
“Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” I have to express my very decided opinion
that they and the “lambs” (?) made from them had no more to do with the
origin of the fable of the “_Barometz_” than the artificial mermaids so
cleverly made by the Japanese have had to do with the origin of the
belief in fish-tailed human beings and divinities. In the first place,
as we shall presently see, these manipulated ferns were not intended by
those who fashioned them to resemble lambs at all. Secondly, if they had
been intended to represent the lamb of the fable, they could have been,
like the Japanese mermaids, only the outcome and illustration of the
legend--not the objects which first gave rise to it. Neither the one nor
the other of these counterfeit fabrications appears to have been ever
common; and neither was certainly manufactured in sufficient numbers,
nor distributed so abundantly and completely over the habitable globe,
as to have laid the foundation of a myth which in the one case was
universally believed,[24] and in the other attracted attention all over
Europe and Western Asia, and also in Egypt. Very few of the Japanese
artificial mermaids have been seen in this country, though they have
been eagerly sought for, and the fern-“lambs” that have been brought to
England may be counted on one’s fingers.[25]
[24] See the Chapter on “Mermaids” by the Author in ‘Sea Fables
Explained,’ one of the Handbooks issued by the Authorities of the
Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. London. Clowes and
Sons, Limited.
[25] I know of only four--(though, of course, there may be others, of
which I shall be glad to receive information)--namely, one in the
Botanical department of the British Museum; another in the Museum of
the Royal College of Surgeons; the specimen sent from India by Mr.
Buckley to the Royal Society in 1698; and that described by Dr. Breyn
in 1725. Of the origin of the first-mentioned nothing is known, though
it is apparently the one figured by John and Andrew Rymsdyk, in their
‘_Museum Britannicum_’ (1778, plate xv.), as one of the curious
objects in the British Museum. Of the second we only know that it was
presented to the College of Surgeons by Mr. Quekett--the habitat of
the fern of which it is composed being erroneously given in the
Catalogue (No. 177 of “Plants and Invertebrates”) as “Plains of
Tartary,” the supposed home of the mythical lamb, but where the fern
in question never grew. That sent to England by Mr. Buckley, and which
was the subject of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper in 1698, seems to have been
lost or mislaid. Whether it remained in the possession of the Royal
Society, or was placed by Sir Hans Sloane in his own collection, it
ought to be in the British Museum. But nothing is known of it there,
nor of the cabinet of surgical instruments and appliances in which it
arrived. I have endeavoured to trace it; but although, as usual, I
have met with every kind assistance and courtesy from the heads of
departments, I have been unsuccessful.
Sir Hans Sloane, who died in 1753, bequeathed his valuable collection
and library to the nation on the condition that £20,000 should be paid
to his executors for the benefit of his daughters. The Government
raised the necessary funds by a guinea lottery, and sufficient money
was thus obtained to purchase also (for £10,500) Montague House, in
Bloomsbury, which then became the British Museum. When the Royal
Society removed from their old premises, in Crane Court, to Somerset
House in 1780 they also gave the contents of their cabinets to the
National Collection, but many of these, and amongst them this
fern-root animal, cannot be found.
Dr. Breyn, of Dantzic, no doubt retained the specimen which he
described, and it is probably in some continental collection.
I know, therefore, of only two of these so-called “lambs” extant in
this country--one in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and
the other in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No history
of either of these has been preserved.
Further, it is a fact which seems to have been strangely overlooked,
that these tree-ferns, with the creeping root-stocks, do not grow in
Tartary. The particular species of _Dicksonia_ from which the
doll-“lambs” were made is a native of Southern China, Assam, and the
Malayan peninsula and islands.[26] And we have conclusive evidence, in
addition to the report made by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society (p. 27),
that these playthings themselves were of Chinese workmanship.
[26] ‘_Synopsis Filicum_,’ by Sir W. J. Hooker and J. G. Baker, F.L.S.
1863. Art. “Dicksonia barometz.”
Juan de Loureiro, an accomplished Portuguese botanist and Fellow of the
Royal Society of Lisbon, who lived and laboured as a Catholic missionary
for more than thirty years in Cochin China, and, afterwards, for three
years in China, thus writes[27]:--
[27] _Flora Cochinchinensis_, tom. i. p. 675. Lisbon. 1790.
“The _Polypodium borametz_ grows in hilly woods in China and Cochin
China. Many authors have written of the Scythian Lamb, or Borametz--most
of them fabulously. Ours is not a fruit, but a root, which is easily
shaped by the help of a little art into the form of _a small rufous dog,
by which name, and not by that of a ‘lamb,’ it is called by the
Chinese_.”
Loureiro describes the cutting off the stalks to form the legs, the
fixing on of smaller ones as ears, and other particulars of the rude
manufacture of these fern-root dogs, as witnessed by himself. The common
name of these toys in China--“Cau-tich,” and in Cochin China,
“Kew-tsie,” both represent a “tan-coloured dog.”
It must also be borne in mind that the lamb-plant was represented as
springing from a seed like that of a melon, but rounder, and that the
natives of the country where it grew planted these seeds. It was
therefore a cultivated plant. The lamb, it was also stated, was
contained within the fruit or seed-capsule of the plant; and when this
fruit, or seed-pod, was ripe it burst open, and the little lamb within
it was disclosed. The wool of this lamb was described by various writers
as being “very white,” “as white as snow,” whereas these root-stocks of
ferns bear no resemblance to a lamb in their natural condition; and when
they have been deftly trimmed into shape the hairs or scales upon them
are tawny orange, matching better with the “tan” markings of a dog,
which they were intended to represent, than with the soft, white fleece
of a young lamb.
Therefore, even if I had no better explanation to offer, I should be led
to the conclusion that the identification of these _tawny_ toy-_dogs_,
made in _China_ from the _root_ of a _wild_ fern, the spores of which
are _as small as dust_, with the “Vegetable _Lambs_” of _Scythia_, whose
_white_ fleeces were found within the ripe and opening _fruit_ of a
_cultivated_ plant, raised from _a large seed_, was obviously erroneous,
and that the origin of the rumour must be sought for elsewhere.
The plant that set all Europe talking of the lambs that grew in fruits
and on stalks of plants somewhere in Scythia was one of far higher
importance and value to mankind than the childish knick-knacks made for
amusement out of the creeping root-stocks of ferns. These and the
curly-fleeced progeny of the poor ewes of Astrachan were lambs that
crossed the track of the first, lost lamb, and led those searching for
it into the mistake of following their respective trails, whilst the
original “Scythian Lamb” escaped from sight.
Tracing the growth and transition of this story of the lamb-plant from a
truthful rumour of a curious fact into a detailed history of an absurd
fiction, I have no doubt whatever that it originated in early
descriptions of the cotton plant, and the introduction of cotton from
India into Western Asia and the adjoining parts of Eastern Europe.
Herodotus, writing (B.C. 445) of the usages of the people of India, says
(lib. iii. cap. 106) of this cotton:--“Certain trees bear for their
fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence, and
the natives clothe themselves in cloths made therefrom.”
In the 47th chapter of the same book, Herodotus describes a corselet
sent by Aahmes (or Amasis) II., King of Egypt, to Sparta as having been
“ornamented with gold and _fleeces from the trees_”--padded with cotton,
in fact.
Ctesias, also, who was the contemporary of Herodotus, and was made
prisoner, and kept by the King of Persia as his court physician for
seventeen years, was acquainted with the use of a kind of wool, the
produce of trees, for spinning and weaving amongst the natives of India,
for he mentions in his ‘_Indica_’ a fragment quoted by Photius,
“tree-garments”; and that he thus referred to clothing made from these
tree-fleeces we have the testimony of Varro:--“Ctesias says that there
are in India _trees that bear wool_.”
Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, reported that “there were
in India trees bearing, as it were, flocks or bunches of wool, and that
the natives made of this wool garments of surpassing whiteness, or else
their black complexions made the material appear whiter than any other.”
Aristobulus, another of Alexander’s generals, made mention in his
journal of the cotton plant, under the name of “the wool-bearing tree,”
and stated that “it bore a capsule that contained seeds which were taken
out, and that which remained was carded like wool.”
Strabo, who records this (lib. xv. cap. 21), referring to it in another
paragraph, writes:--“Nearchus says that their (the natives’) fine
clothing was made from this wool, and that the Macedonians used it for
mattresses and the stuffing of their saddles.”[28]
[28] Unfortunately the Journal and Narrative of Nearchus, written B.C.
325-324, are lost, as are also those of Aristobulus, who seems to have
been a very accurate observer; and we are indebted to Strabo and
Arrian for the summaries and extracts from them that we possess.
Strabo’s ‘_Geographia_’ was completed A.D. 21, about three years
before his death. Fabius Arrianus wrote his ‘_Historia Indica_,’ and
‘_Periplus Maris Erythræi_,’ which contain valuable particulars of
Alexander’s expedition, about A.D. 131-135.
Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, writing about B.C. 306,
says[29]:--
[29] ‘_De Historia Plantarum_,’ lib. iv. cap. 4.
“The trees from which the Indians make their clothes have leaves like
those of the black mulberry, but the whole plant resembles the dog-rose.
They are planted in rows on the plains, so as to look like vines at a
distance.”
In another passage of the same book (cap. 9) he writes:--
“In the Island of Tylos, which is in the Arabian Gulf,[30] the
wool-bearing trees, which grow there abundantly, have leaves like the
vine, but smaller. They bear no fruit, but the pod containing the wool
is about the size of a spring apple (“μηλον”), whilst it is unripe and
closed, but when it is ripe it opens: the wool is then gathered from it,
and woven into cloths of various qualities--some inferior, but others of
great value.”
[30] Theophrastus is in error in placing Tylos in the Arabian Gulf
(which we now call the Red Sea); it was in the Persian Gulf, and is
now known as Bahrsin. The ancients, however, gave to the whole of the
sea between the east coast of Africa, north of Mogador, and the west
shores of India the name of the “Erythræan Sea,” from King Erythros,
of whom nothing more is known than the name, which, in Greek,
signifies “red.” From this casual meaning of the word it came to be
believed that the water of this sea differed in colour from that of
others, and that it was consequently more difficult to navigate.
This description by Theophrastus is remarkably correct as applied to the
herbaceous variety of the cotton-plant, from which the chief supply of
cotton for spinning and weaving into cloth has always been obtained. In
its mode of growth--branched, spreading, and flexible--it may well be
likened to the dog-rose; and its palmate leaves bear a close resemblance
to those of the black mulberry, which differ little from the leaves of
some varieties of the vine. The remark relative to the mode of
cultivation is also exactly applicable to the cotton-plant, which is set
in rows about four feet asunder, and the plants about two feet apart, so
that a field of it resembles a vineyard when seen from a distance.
Pomponius Mela, the author next in order of time, also writes in his
account of India[31] of the “trees that produce wool used by the natives
for clothing.”
[31] _De Situ Orbis_, lib. iii. cap. 7.
Then comes Pliny, who, incompetent and worthless as a naturalist, though
admirable as a writer, obscured this subject, as he did many others. In
his ‘Natural History’[32] he mentions cotton in four different
paragraphs, and in every one of them inaccurately. He confuses cotton
with flax, and the fabrics woven of it with linen, and treats of silk as
a downy substance scraped from the leaves of trees. And, in
transcribing, or translating, the passage from Theophrastus relating to
the “wool-bearing trees,” he distorts the author’s words, and states
that “these trees bear _gourds_ the size of a quince, which burst when
ripe, and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants make cloths
like valuable linen.” Pliny therefore seems to have been the author of
the “gourd” portion of the story which afterwards obtained currency in
Western Europe.
[32] ‘_Naturalis Historia_,’ A.D. 77.
I shall quote one more ancient mention of the “fleece-bearing plant,”
because the author of it gives a more exact description than any
previous writer of that portion of it from which the wool is taken.
Julius Pollux, who wrote about a hundred years later than Pliny, says in
his ‘Onomasticon’:--
“There are also _Byssina_ and _Byssus_, a kind of flax. But among the
Indians a sort of wool is obtained from a tree. The cloth made from this
wool may be compared with linen, except that it is thicker. The tree
produces a fruit most nearly resembling a walnut, but three-cleft. After
the outer covering, which is like a walnut, has divided and become dry,
the substance resembling wool is extracted, and is used in the
manufacture of cloth.”
This remark, of the pericarp of the cotton-pod, in some species of
_Gossypium_, being three-cleft, is in accordance with fact, and is not
noticed by any previous writer.
In tracing the development of these early and truthful accounts of the
cotton-plant into the complete fable of the compound plant-animal, the
“Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” we shall find it, as in the case of some
other myths of the Middle Ages, attributable to two principal causes:--
1. The misinterpretation of ambiguous or figurative language; 2. The
similarity of appearance of two actually different and incongruous
objects.
It is a curious fact, which I believe has not hitherto been noticed in
connection with this subject, that the Greek word “μηλον” (melon), very
fitly used by Theophrastus in the passage quoted (p. 48) to describe the
form and appearance of the unripe cotton-pod, may be equally correctly
translated “a fruit,” “an apple,” or “a sheep”: the adjective “ἑαρινόν,”
which is also used, means “vernal”; therefore the phrase may be regarded
as signifying either that the vegetable wool was taken from a “spring
apple” growing upon a tree, or from a “spring-sheep” (or lamb) growing
upon a tree. Although I believe that the mistake originated, as I shall
presently explain, in the actual and substantial resemblance between
cotton wool and lamb’s wool, rather than in the verbal identity of an
appellative noun, it is not improbable that this ambiguous phrase of
convertible interpretation may, in some measure, have contributed to
convey, many centuries later, to readers of a dead language who knew
nothing of the plant referred to, an erroneous idea of the nature of
“the fleeces that grew on trees.” It would seem so much more likely that
a soft fleece of white wool should grow upon a young lamb yeaned in
spring-time than inside a fruit like an apple in the partly-formed and
unripe condition in which it is found in spring, that students in the
Middle Ages, as they pondered doubtfully over this word of double
meaning, would probably prefer the first interpretation, and translate
the passage of Theophrastus as a statement that the wool was taken from
a “spring-sheep,” or lamb, growing upon a tree which bore no other
fruit. It is also probable that this use of the Greek word “_melon_”
gave rise to the report in later times that the seed of the plant which
bore the “Vegetable Lamb” was like that of a melon or gourd.
We may next take into account the prevalence amongst many tribes and
nations in both hemispheres of the custom of using figurative language
in relation to the objects and occurrences of their daily life.
A very striking and remarkable proof is given us by Herodotus that the
Scythians of the North-West, who carried both the cotton and the rumour
of the lamb-plant into Muscovy, were in the habit of speaking thus
figuratively and metaphorically. He writes (lib. iv. cap. 2):--
“The part beyond the north, the Scythians say, can neither be seen nor
passed through, by reason of the feathers shed there; for the earth and
air are full of feathers, and it is these which interrupt the view.”
Further on (lib. iv. cap. 31) he also observes:--
“With respect to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is
filled, and on account of which it is not possible either to see further
upon the continent, or to pass through it, I entertain the following
opinion. In the upper parts of this country it continually snows--less
in summer than in winter, as is reasonable. Now, whoever has seen snow
falling thick near him will know what I mean; for snow is like feathers,
and on account of the winter being so severe the northern parts of this
country are uninhabited. I think, then, that the Scythians and their
neighbours call the snow feathers, comparing them together.”
Herodotus was, of course, right in this interpretation.
Who can doubt that the people who would thus realistically describe snow
as feathers would probably describe the white wool of the cotton-pod as
“tree-lamb’s-wool,” the produce of a “lamb-plant,” or “plant-lamb”?
The growth and development of the story of “the Scythian Lamb” from the
similarity of appearance of two really different objects may be best
explained by comparing it with another Natural-history myth, which ran
curiously parallel with it. I allude to the fable that Sir John
Mandeville tells us he related to his Tartar acquaintances, viz. that of
the “_Barnacle Geese_”--which has never been surpassed as a specimen of
ignorant credulity and persistent error.
From the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth century it was implicitly
and almost universally believed that in the Western Islands of Scotland
certain geese, of which the nesting-places were never found, instead of
being hatched from eggs, like other birds, were bred from “shell-fish”
which grew on trees. Upon the shores where these geese abounded, pieces
of timber and old trunks of trees covered with barnacles were often seen
which had been stranded by the sea. From between the partly opened
shells of the barnacles protruded their plumose cirrhi, which in some
degree resemble the feathers of a bird. Hence arose the belief that they
contained real birds. The fishermen persuaded themselves that these
birds within the shells were the geese whose origin they had been
previously unable to discover, and that they were thus bred, instead of
being hatched, like other birds, from eggs. As the tale spread to a
distance, it gained by repetition, like the story of “The Three Black
Crows” amusingly told by Dr. John Byrom.[33] The trees found upon the
shore were soon reported to be trees growing on the shore; that which
grew on trees people soon asserted to be the fruit of trees; and thus,
from step to step, the story increased in wonder and obtained credit. It
was discussed during many centuries by philosophers and men of learning,
who, one after another, accepted the evidence in its favour, until Sir
Robert Moray, F.R.S., in 1678, reported to the Royal Society that he had
examined these barnacles, and that in every shell that he had opened he
had “found a little bird--the little bill, like that of a goose; the
eyes marked; the head, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feet formed, the
feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish-coloured, and the feet
like those of other water-fowl.” This nonsense was published in the
‘Philosophical Transactions’ (No. 137, January and February, 1678) under
the auspices of the highest representatives of science in this country.
The old botanist Gerard had previously (in 1597) had the audacity to
assert that he had witnessed the transformation of the “shell-fish” into
geese.[34]
[33] See Appendix G.
[34] See ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ by the Author, 2nd edition, p. 114.
Clowes and Sons, Limited.
In like manner the “wool-bearing plant” of Ctesias, Nearchus,
Aristobulus, and Theophrastus, the plant of which Herodotus wrote that
“it bore as its fruit fleeces which surpassed those of lambs in beauty
and excellence,” was soon reported to be “a plant bearing fruit within
which was a little lamb having a fleece of surpassing beauty and
excellence.” As it was evident that a living lamb must take food, the
“lytylle best” was, in the next version, kindly placed upon a stalk, and
so balanced thereon as to be able to bend downward, and browze upon the
surrounding herbage. Of course the lamb, if it fed on grass, must have
digestive and other organs, like those of lambs ordinarily begotten, so
these were liberally bestowed upon it with as much particularity as that
exercised by Sir Robert Moray in enumerating the “parts and features”
of the “little tree-bird.”[35] The transformation of the wondrous
“plant-animal” from “a little lamb with a white fleece disclosed by the
bursting of a ripe seed-pod growing on a stalk” into “a lamb growing on
a stalk attached to its navel, and browzing on the herbage within its
reach,” vastly increased the difficulty of identifying it. Like the
barnacle geese, it was discussed by philosophers and sought for by
travellers; but its features had been distorted beyond recognition, and,
instead of endeavouring to find its original portrait in the pages of
old historians and geographers, enquirers looked for fresh information
concerning it in the misleading tales of successive travellers. At last,
as we have seen, another “vegetable lamb” crossed the trail of the
original lost one, in the shape of the two Chinese toy-dogs laid before
the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn. That distinguished
body of savants unfortunately accorded their recognition to the wrongful
claimant, and ever since then botanists and antiquarians have regarded
the problem as solved, and have been satisfied that in these few rude
models of “tan-coloured dogs” they have found the true and original
“snow-white” “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia.”
[35] The figures of the ancient partly human, partly piscine deities,
from which originated the belief in mermaids, similarly passed through
various mutations. The first idea was that of a man coming out of the
mouth of a fish. Subsequently, the form was that of a man clad in the
skin of a fish--wearing it as a mantle--the head of the fish covering
that of the man, like a cap or helmet. And so on, till a being was
developed the upper half of whose body was human, and the lower half,
from the waist downwards, that of a fish.
The contented acceptance by botanists and other representatives of
science, down to the present day, of three or four trumpery toys
artificially and roughly fashioned by the Chinese from the rhizomes of
a fern which does not grow in Tartary or Scythia, and brought to Europe
by travellers at rare intervals, as sufficient to account for the origin
of a rumour which spread from Asia all over Europe and attracted the
attention of learned men of all countries for many centuries, is not the
least remarkable circumstance in the history of the legend of the
“Scythian Lamb.”
Well might the old historians consider worthy of record the reports they
had heard of the existence of the “wool-bearing tree,” for, as Dr. Ure
has remarked,[36] “it would be universally regarded as a miracle of
vegetation did not familiarity blunt the moral feelings of mankind. This
class of plants, largely distributed over the torrid zone, affords to
the inhabitants a spontaneous and inexhaustible supply of the clothing
material best adapted to screen their swarthy bodies from the scorching
sun, and to favour the cooling influence of the breeze, as well as
cutaneous exhalation. While the tropical heats change the soft wool of
the sheep into a harsh, scanty hair, unfit for clothing purposes, they
cherish and ripen the vegetable wool, with its more slender and porous
fibres, admirably suited for clothing in a hot climate, as the grosser
and warmer animal fibres are in a cold one. No sooner does the cotton
pod arrive at maturity than its swollen capsules burst with an elastic
force, in gaping segments, in order, as it were, to display to the most
careless eye their white fleecy treasure, and to invite the hand of the
observer to pluck it from the seeds, and to work it up into a light and
beautiful robe. Thus held forth from the extremity of every bough, by
its resemblance to sheep’s wool it could not fail to attract attention.”
[36] ‘The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain,’ p. 71.
Such keen observers as the ancient conquerors of India would have been
sure to notice with surprise and interest the wonderful vegetable
product which could be compared to nothing so aptly as to the white,
soft wool of a little lamb, to appreciate its value and usefulness, and
to admire the fabrics manufactured from it. And, as these fabrics
gradually found their way northward from India by the great caravan
routes, either by Samarcand, or by the passes of the Hindu Kush, by
Bokhara and Khiva, through Turkestan and Tartary into Russia, in one
direction, and by Egypt to the countries on the Mediterranean in
another, the sensation they would cause is not difficult to realise. We
can imagine how the newly-arrived trader, as he displayed his goods,
would be eagerly questioned by intending purchasers of the novel, soft,
white or coloured cloths, so well suited to their requirements, as to
the nature of the raw material of which they had been woven. We can
picture to ourselves their astonishment when he explained to them that
the delicate, white, flossy fibres from which his fabrics were made, of
which he, perhaps, showed them a sample, and which looked so like lamb’s
wool, was the produce of a plant, the fruit of which burst open when it
became ripe, and exposed to view the white wool within it. And we can
easily understand how the fame of this spread, and was carried into
distant lands, and how this “vegetable lamb’s wool” was discussed and
talked about in countries where it, and the yarn spun from it, and the
cloths woven from it, had not yet penetrated.
Now, let us complete our identification of the cotton-pod of India as
“the Vegetable Lamb” of the fable by showing its right to the title of
“the _Scythian_ Lamb.”
There is probably no race of men, or rather aggregate of races,
mentioned prominently in history, of whom, and of whose country so
little has been definitely known as of the ancient Scythians. They have
been generally and vaguely, and, to a certain extent, correctly,
regarded as represented in modern times by the numerous hordes of
Tartars inhabiting the lands north of the mountains of the Caucasus, and
part of central and northern Asia. So exclusively have they been
identified with these tribes that the terms Tartary and Scythia have
been looked upon as synonymous, and thus “the Scythian Lamb” has been
called also the “Tartarian Lamb,” or “the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.”
Under the name of “Scythia” was included (as may be seen on any good
classical map) a vast territory, partly in Europe and partly in Asia,
extending from the 25th to the 116th degree of East longitude. The
European portion of it was comparatively a small province, known as
“Scythia Parva,” and comprised those districts of Silistria and
Bessarabia bordering the western shores of the Black Sea, south of the
mouths of the Danube. Scythia in Asia, which was separated from Scythia
Parva by the two Sarmatias, included the whole of Turkestan, Thibet,
Mongolia, and Siberia. It was bounded on the West by the Ural Mountains
and river, and extended northward through then unknown regions to the
Arctic Circle, and southward to the Himalayas. But still further south,
beyond the western Himalayas--the Hindu-Kush--was another part of
Scythia, known as “Indo-Scythia.” This stretched southward to the
Erythrean Sea (the Arabian Sea), and was that part of India now called
Scinde and the Punjab. Through it flowed the Indus and the Hydaspes, and
it was on the banks of the latter river, at Bucephalia (either the
present Jhelum, or Jubalpore, eighteen miles lower), that Alexander’s
admiral collected the flotilla which he conducted down the Hydaspes to
its confluence with the Indus, and along the whole course of that great
river, and made his way by its lower mouth into the open water of the
Arabian Sea. Then and there it was--from the time of their arrival in
the country, during the war with Pontus and other Indian princes, and on
their ten months’ voyage homeward--that Alexander and his commodore
Nearchus saw the native population of Indo-Scythia “clad in garments the
material of which was whiter than any other, or at any rate appeared so
in contrast with their wearers’ swarthy skin,” and which were “made of
the wool like that of lambs, which grew in tufts and bunches upon
trees.”
Although more than two thousand years have passed since then, Nearchus’s
description of this costume--“a shirt, or tunic, reaching to the middle
of the leg, a sheet folded about the shoulders, and a turban rolled
round the head”--would be almost equally accurate at the present day.
Its wearers may be congratulated that fashion has left unchanged and
unspoiled an apparel so serviceable and well-suited to the climate of
the country and the habits of its people!
As the “fleeces of vegetable wool, softer and whiter than that of the
lamb,” came from Indo-Scythia, the supposed plant-animal that bore them
was first called “the Scythian Lamb.”
As time passed on, the name of Scythia in Asia became merged in that of
Tartary. From the time that the Mahometans became masters of Egypt and
Constantinople, as no Christian was allowed to pass through their
dominion to the East, intercourse with India by the two most direct
roads ceased entirely. Cotton goods and other merchandise from India
were therefore conveyed by the trading caravans before mentioned. The
depôt to which they were generally forwarded was Samarcand, as was
correctly related to Guillaume Postel by Michel, the Arabic interpreter
(p. 13). There they met the great caravan travelling from the East into
Russia, and, on the journey, passed through part of Scythia in Asia. In
each district the caravan was joined by hosts of Tartar traders carrying
with them the wool of their sheep, the hair of their goats, and the
skins of both, the soft, curly skins of their lambs, and droves of hardy
colts, the produce of their mares, whose milk was, and still is, to them
as important an article of diet as that of cows is to ourselves. As the
Tartar merchants brought with the fleeces of their sheep, goats, and
lambs the fleeces also of “the fine white wool that grew on trees” and
the piece-goods made from it, “the vegetable lamb” from which it was
supposed to have been sheared became also in this manner identified with
Tartary, in the same way as were Indian spices with “Araby,” through
which they sometimes passed in transit, but where they never grew. It
thus became known as “the wool of the Tartarian Lamb,” and travellers
whose curiosity concerning the far-famed “zoophyte” was subsequently
aroused sought for it in the dominions of the “Great Cham.” But, just as
when Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., sought in
Scotland for the “goose-bearing tree,” which he eagerly desired to see,
upon being told that it grew much further north, complained that
“miracles will always flee farther and farther away”; so when any
painstaking traveller in Tartary endeavoured to investigate the subject
of the strange “plant-animal,” he was sure to learn (unless he allowed
himself to be cunningly hoaxed by the skin of a natural lamb, or the
fruit of another plant) that the object of his search was non-existent
in its reputed birthplace, and that he must look for it elsewhere.
Thus the story of the “Scythian” or “Tartarian Lamb” grew, and was
exaggerated and distorted, until all traces of its origin were so
obliterated that even men of thought and learning have been unable to
recognise in the misleading descriptions given of it the plant which,
excepting corn, is, perhaps, the most valuable to mankind. For, as I
have said, it seems to me to be clear and indubitable that the fruit
which burst when ripe and disclosed within it “a little lamb” was the
cotton pod, and that the soft, white, delicate fleece of “the Vegetable
Lamb of Scythia” was that which we still call “Cotton Wool.”
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE REAL “VEGETABLE LAMB”--A COTTON POD.
(_Gossypium herbaceum._)]