Chapter I: The Fable and Its Interpretation (2)

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.”

(_Gossypium herbaceum._)]