By skilful treatment the inhabitants of Southern China occasionally converted the thick root-stock of one of these tree-ferns, “Dicksonia barometz,” into a rough semblance of a quadruped, which quadruped, by a foregone conclusion, was supposed to be a lamb. They removed entirely the fronds that grew upward from the rhizome, excepting four, and these four they trimmed down until only about four inches of each stalk was left. The object thus shaped being turned upside down, the root-stock represented the body of the animal, and was supported by the four inverted stalks of the fronds, as upon four legs. If the specimen had an insufficient number of stalks growing from it to make the four legs, others were artificially and neatly affixed to it; ears were similarly provided, and, if necessary, the trunk was fitted with a head and neck made from another root-stock.
So far, well! The identification of the material of which these imitations of four-legged animals were fashioned as the rhizome and frond-stalks of a tree-fern is complete, and perfectly satisfactory. But, having given to these root-stocks of tree-ferns the full benefit of an acknowledgment of the economic uses that have been made of them in various ways and in different localities, and having frankly stated the still accepted theory of their connection with the myth of the “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” I have to express my very decided opinion that they and the “lambs” (?) made from them had no more to do with the origin of the fable of the “Barometz” than the artificial mermaids so cleverly made by the Japanese have had to do with the origin of the belief in fish-tailed human beings and divinities. In the first place, as we shall presently see, these manipulated ferns were not intended by those who fashioned them to resemble lambs at all. Secondly, if they had been intended to represent the lamb of the fable, they could have been, like the Japanese mermaids, only the outcome and illustration of the legend—not the objects which first gave rise to it. Neither the one nor the other of these counterfeit fabrications appears to have been ever common; and neither was certainly manufactured in sufficient numbers, nor distributed so abundantly and completely over the habitable globe, as to have laid the foundation of a myth which in the one case was universally believed,[24] and in the other attracted attention all over Europe and Western Asia, and also in Egypt. Very few of the Japanese artificial mermaids have been seen in this country, though they have been eagerly sought for, and the fern-“lambs” that have been brought to England may be counted on one’s fingers.[25]
[24] See the Chapter on “Mermaids” by the Author in ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ one of the Handbooks issued by the Authorities of the Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. London. Clowes and Sons, Limited.
[25] I know of only four—(though, of course, there may be others, of which I shall be glad to receive information)—namely, one in the Botanical department of the British Museum; another in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; the specimen sent from India by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society in 1698; and that described by Dr. Breyn in 1725. Of the origin of the first-mentioned nothing is known, though it is apparently the one figured by John and Andrew Rymsdyk, in their ‘Museum Britannicum’ (1778, plate xv.), as one of the curious objects in the British Museum. Of the second we only know that it was presented to the College of Surgeons by Mr. Quekett—the habitat of the fern of which it is composed being erroneously given in the Catalogue (No. 177 of “Plants and Invertebrates”) as “Plains of Tartary,” the supposed home of the mythical lamb, but where the fern in question never grew. That sent to England by Mr. Buckley, and which was the subject of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper in 1698, seems to have been lost or mislaid. Whether it remained in the possession of the Royal Society, or was placed by Sir Hans Sloane in his own collection, it ought to be in the British Museum. But nothing is known of it there, nor of the cabinet of surgical instruments and appliances in which it arrived. I have endeavoured to trace it; but although, as usual, I have met with every kind assistance and courtesy from the heads of departments, I have been unsuccessful.
Sir Hans Sloane, who died in 1753, bequeathed his valuable collection and library to the nation on the condition that £20,000 should be paid to his executors for the benefit of his daughters. The Government raised the necessary funds by a guinea lottery, and sufficient money was thus obtained to purchase also (for £10,500) Montague House, in Bloomsbury, which then became the British Museum. When the Royal Society removed from their old premises, in Crane Court, to Somerset House in 1780 they also gave the contents of their cabinets to the National Collection, but many of these, and amongst them this fern-root animal, cannot be found.
Dr. Breyn, of Dantzic, no doubt retained the specimen which he described, and it is probably in some continental collection.
I know, therefore, of only two of these so-called “lambs” extant in this country—one in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and the other in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No history of either of these has been preserved.
Further, it is a fact which seems to have been strangely overlooked, that these tree-ferns, with the creeping root-stocks, do not grow in Tartary. The particular species of Dicksonia from which the doll-“lambs” were made is a native of Southern China, Assam, and the Malayan peninsula and islands.[26] And we have conclusive evidence, in addition to the report made by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society ([p. 27]), that these playthings themselves were of Chinese workmanship.
[26] ‘Synopsis Filicum,’ by Sir W. J. Hooker and J. G. Baker, F.L.S. 1863. Art. “Dicksonia barometz.”