ivorous animal would attack it."

Image: FIG. 3.--The vegetable lamb of Tartary.

In Fig. 3 is shown Joannes Zahn's idea of what this wonderful "Barometz
or Tartarian lamb" was like. Now, mainly through an imaginative
Englishman named Sir John Mandeville, who lived in the reign of Edward
III., did this latter form of the story find its way into England.

This illustrious traveller left his native country in 1322, and for over
thirty years traversed the principal countries of Europe and Asia. When
he came home he commenced to write a history of his remarkable travels.
In these are found references to the Cotton plant, and so curious an
account does he give of it, that it has been considered worth
reproduction in his own words: "And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as
though it weren Gourdes: and whan ther been rype men kutten hem ato, and
men fynden with inne a lyttle 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 well that God
is Marveyllous in his Werkes."

No wonder that many accepted his account of the "Vegetable Lamb" without
question. When a nobleman of the reputation of Sir J. Mandeville stated
that he had actually eaten of the fruit of the Cotton, was there any
need for further doubt?

It appears, however, that contemporary with Mandeville was another
traveller, an Italian Friar, named Odoricus, who also had travelled in
Asia and heard of the plant which yielded cotton. He, too, fell a prey
to the lamb theory. Many other writers and travellers followed, all more
or less believing in the plant animal theory. However, in 1641, Kircher
of Avignon in describing cotton declared it to be a plant. And so the
story for years passed through many changes. First one would assert what
he considered to be the right solution, and this was immediately
challenged by the next investigator, so that assertion and contradiction
followed each other in quick succession.

In 1725, however, a German doctor named Breyn communicated with the
Royal Society on the subject of the "Vegetable lamb," emphatically
stating the story to be nothing more or less than a fable. He very
naively remarked that "the work and productions of nature should be
discovered, not invented," and he threw doubts as to whether those who
had written about the mythical lamb