Henry Lee

“ Having safely accomplished this arduous undertaking, he led the main body of his army back to Persia by land. The command of the fleet, with a considerable body of troops on board of it, remained with Nearchus, who, after a coasting voyage of seven months, brought it safely up the Persian Gulf into the Euphrates.
Alexander’s expedition into India was no less an intelligent exploration than a successful invasion, and the western world is more indebted than is generally understood to the original genius, conspicuous foresight, political wisdom, and indefatigable exertions of that remarkable man. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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 [46] 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. ”

“ For in Mexico and Central America are found unmistakable proofs of the greatness and culture of former dwellers in the land. Immense piles of cyclopean masonry, of inconceivable grandeur, and incalculable antiquity; mounds and pyramids as massive as those of Egypt, huge reservoirs for water, aqueducts, ruins of public buildings, temples and palaces, tell of a powerful and wealthy nation, skilled in engineering and other sciences, and in all the important arts of civilized life. ”

“ To obtain a clue to the identity of “The Scythian Lamb” we must consult the pages of historians and philosophers who lived and wrote from eighteen to sixteen centuries before Sir John Mandeville published his version of the story; and, having there found set before us the real “Vegetable Lamb” in all its truthful simplicity and beauty, we shall be able to recognise its form and features under the various disguises it was made to assume by the wonder-mongers of the Middle Ages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ As the tree only attains to a height of from twelve to twenty feet, it is difficult to distinguish the tree cotton and the shrub cotton when referred to by travellers.
The cotton plant, in all its varieties, requires a sandy soil. It flourishes on the rocky hills of Hindostan, Africa, and the West Indies, and will grow where the soil is too poor to produce any other valuable crop.
Cotton has always been regarded as indigenous to India, and as the characteristic clothing material of that country, as flax is of Egypt, silk of China, and the wool of sheep and goats of Northern Asia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is surprising that notwithstanding the comparative proximity of Egypt to India, cotton, which had been for ages so extensively manufactured in the latter country, should have remained so long unknown or unappreciated by a people to whom it would have furnished a cheaper and more comfortable article of dress than the flax-plant. But it is certain that linen was held in favour and the use of it prevailed in Egypt till the Christian era, although the cotton fabrics imported into Berenice were gradually coming into more general wear. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The Portuguese met them with undaunted bravery, and, after several conflicts, vanquished the Ottoman squadron, and remained masters of the Indian Ocean.
The immediate effect of direct communication with the East by sea was the lowering of the prices of Indian produce. Commerce naturally sought the cheapest market. The trade of Venice was annihilated, and the stream of wealth that had flowed to her treasury was dried at its source. The merchandize of India was shipped from the most convenient ports, and conveyed cheaply, safely, and directly to Lisbon, and thence was distributed through Europe. ”

“ The fable of the existence of a mysterious “plant-animal” variously entitled “The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,” “The Scythian Lamb,” and “The Barometz,” or “Borametz,” is one of the curious myths of the Middle Ages with which I have been long acquainted. ”

“ The shrub cotton grows in almost every country where the annual herbaceous cotton is found. Its duration varies according to the climate. In some places, as in the West Indies, it is biennial or triennial; in others, as in India, Egypt, &c., it lasts from six to ten years; in the hottest climates it is perennial; and in the cooler countries it becomes an annual.
The tree-cotton, Gossypium arboreum, grows in India, Egypt, China, the interior and western coast of Africa, and in some parts of America. ”

“ And, although we now draw our chief supply of cotton from the western country discovered by Columbus, one result of increased facility of communication with the East, in conjunction with perfection of machinery, is that the vegetable wool coming therefrom, after giving employment to thousands of our people, and adding to our national prosperity, is returned by the same route, manufactured into various fabrics wherewith to clothe the people who cultivated it. ”

“ But during my researches in the works of ancient writers when preparing the manuscript of my two books, ‘Sea Monsters Unmasked,’ and ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ I came upon passages of old authors which convinced me that these toy “lambs” made from ferns by the Chinese had no more connexion with the story of “The Vegetable Lamb” than the artificial mermaids so cleverly constructed by the Japanese were the cause and origin of the ancient and world-wide belief in mermaids. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [55] 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.” ”

“ As India carried on a very important manufacture of cotton for home consumption, as well as for her large exports, it might be supposed that China would have been led to participate in the advantages offered by it. But, as in Egypt flax had been for many ages the raw material principally used for the clothing of the population, so in China fabrics woven from the web of the silkworm were, from the earliest times, used for the dress of all classes of the people. ”

“ 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 [52] the white wool of the cotton-pod as “tree-lamb’s-wool,” the produce of a “lamb-plant,” or “plant-lamb”? ”

“ 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 various stages of its progress Westward were so distinctly and intimately dependent on many remarkable events in the world’s history, by which its advance was alternately retarded and facilitated, that the annals of the “vegetable wool” which holds so important a place amongst the manufacturing industries of Great Britain are hardly less romantic than the fable of “The Vegetable Lamb,” which was its forerunner. ”

“ In 1560, England imported, through Antwerp, cotton brought from Italy and the Levant, as well as that carried from India to Lisbon by the Portuguese, and showed some anxiety to compete in its manufacture with foreign countries. An impulse was given to this ambition in 1585 by a fresh influx of Flemish workpeople, who, driven from their own country to escape the cruelties of the Duke of Alba during the religious persecution of the Low Countries by the Spaniards, found an asylum in England, and brought with them the skill in workmanship which adjoining States had long envied. ”

“ 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 [57] ancient Scythians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”