You are here
قراءة كتاب The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant
THE VEGETABLE LAMB
OF
TARTARY;
A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF COTTON AND
THE COTTON TRADE.
BY
HENRY LEE, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S.,
SOMETIME NATURALIST OF THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM,
AND
AUTHOR OF ‘THE OCTOPUS, OR THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT,’
‘SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED,’ ‘SEA FABLES EXPLAINED,’ ETC.
ILLUSTRATED.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1887.
All Rights reserved.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| CHAPTER I. | |
| The Fable and its Interpretation | 1 |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| The History of Cotton and its Introduction into Europe | 63 |
| Appendix | 97 |
| Index | 107 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| FIG. | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| The “Barometz,” or “Tartarian Lamb.”—After Joannes Zahn | Frontispiece | |
| 1.— | The Vegetable Lamb Plant.—After Sir John Mandeville | 3 |
| 2.— | Portrait of the “Barometz,” or “Scythian Lamb.”—After Claude Duret | 9 |
| 3.— | Adam and Eve admiring the Plants in the Garden of Eden. The “Vegetable Lamb” in the background.—Fac-simile of the Frontispiece of Parkinson’s “Paradisus” | 19 |
| 4.— | Rhizome of a Fern, shaped by the Chinese to represent a tan-coloured Dog, and laid before the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane as a Specimen of the “Barometz,” or “Tartarian Lamb.”—From the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ vol. xx., p. 861 | 25 |
| 5.— | Rough Model of a tan-coloured Dog, shaped by The Chinese from the Rhizome of a Fern, and submitted to the Royal Society by Dr. Breyn as a Specimen of the “Scythian Vegetable Lamb,” or Borametz.—From the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ No. 390 | 31 |
| 6.— | The “Borametz,” or “Scythian Lamb.”—From De la Croix’s ‘Connubia Florum’ | 37 |
| 7.— | A Cotton-pod | 61 |
PREFACE.
The fable of the existence of a mysterious “plant-animal” variously entitled “The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,” “The Scythian Lamb,” and “The Barometz,” or “Borametz,” is one of the curious myths of the Middle Ages with which I have been long acquainted. Until the year 1883, not having given serious thought to it, or made it a subject of critical examination, I had been content to accept as correct the explanation of it now universally adopted; namely, that it originated from certain little lamb-like toy figures ingeniously constructed by the Chinese from the rhizome and frond-stems of a tree-fern, which, from its identification with the object of the fable, has received the name of Dicksonia Barometz. But during my researches in the works of ancient writers when preparing the manuscript of my two books, ‘Sea Monsters Unmasked,’ and ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ I came upon passages of old authors which convinced me that these toy “lambs” made from ferns by the Chinese had no more connexion with the story of “The