It occurred to some medieval humorist to cut off the upper part of the leaf-stalks, and to make a sort of toy lamb out of the four leaf-stalk stumps and part of the woolly or furry stem.
This was palmed off as a wonderful curiosity of nature, as "a plant that became an animal," upon the ingenuous tourist of the period.
Such a subject was thoroughly congenial to the learned mind in the Middle Ages, and an enormous quantity of literature was produced in consequence. The general theory is given in the following lines:—
"Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz, thy golden hair,
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coralmoss and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime,
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,