The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant

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.

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"

Large image (365 kB)

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 fotal 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] 'Amonitatum 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."

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,...