Who can doubt that the people who would thus realistically describe snow as feathers would probably describe the white wool of the cotton-pod as “tree-lamb’s-wool,” the produce of a “lamb-plant,” or “plant-lamb”?
The growth and development of the story of “the Scythian Lamb” from the similarity of appearance of two really different objects may be best explained by comparing it with another Natural-history myth, which ran curiously parallel with it. I allude to the fable that Sir John Mandeville tells us he related to his Tartar acquaintances, viz. that of the “Barnacle Geese”—which has never been surpassed as a specimen of ignorant credulity and persistent error.
From the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth century it was implicitly and almost universally believed that in the Western Islands of Scotland certain geese, of which the nesting-places were never found, instead of being hatched from eggs, like other birds, were bred from “shell-fish” which grew on trees. Upon the shores where these geese abounded, pieces of timber and old trunks of trees covered with barnacles were often seen which had been stranded by the sea. From between the partly opened shells of the barnacles protruded their plumose cirrhi, which in some degree resemble the feathers of a bird. Hence arose the belief that they contained real birds. The fishermen persuaded themselves that these birds within the shells were the geese whose origin they had been previously unable to discover, and that they were thus bred, instead of being hatched, like other birds, from eggs. As the tale spread to a distance, it gained by repetition, like the story of “The Three Black Crows” amusingly told by Dr. John Byrom.[33] The trees found upon the shore were soon reported to be trees growing on the shore; that which grew on trees people soon asserted to be the fruit of trees; and thus, from step to step, the story increased in wonder and obtained credit. It was discussed during many centuries by philosophers and men of learning, who, one after another, accepted the evidence in its favour, until Sir Robert Moray, F.R.S., in 1678, reported to the Royal Society that he had examined these barnacles, and that in every shell that he had opened he had “found a little bird—the little bill, like that of a goose; the eyes marked; the head, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish-coloured, and the feet like those of other water-fowl.” This nonsense was published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (No. 137, January and February, 1678) under the auspices of the highest representatives of science in this country. The old botanist Gerard had previously (in 1597) had the audacity to assert that he had witnessed the transformation of the “shell-fish” into geese.[34]
[33] See [Appendix G].
[34] See ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ by the Author, 2nd edition, p. 114. Clowes and Sons, Limited.
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. Of course the lamb, if it fed on grass, must have digestive and other organs, like those of lambs ordinarily begotten, so these were liberally bestowed upon it with as much particularity as that exercised by Sir Robert Moray in enumerating the “parts and features” of the “little tree-bird.”[35] The transformation of the wondrous “plant-animal” from “a little lamb with a white fleece disclosed by the bursting of a ripe seed-pod growing on a stalk” into “a lamb growing on a stalk attached to its navel, and browzing on the herbage within its reach,” vastly increased the difficulty of identifying it. Like the barnacle geese, it was discussed by philosophers and sought for by travellers; but its features had been distorted beyond recognition, and, instead of endeavouring to find its original portrait in the pages of old historians and geographers, enquirers looked for fresh information concerning it in the misleading tales of successive travellers. 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.”
[35] The figures of the ancient partly human, partly piscine deities, from which originated the belief in mermaids, similarly passed through various mutations. The first idea was that of a man coming out of the mouth of a fish. Subsequently, the form was that of a man clad in the skin of a fish—wearing it as a mantle—the head of the fish covering that of the man, like a cap or helmet. And so on, till a being was developed the upper half of whose body was human, and the lower half, from the waist downwards, that of a fish.
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 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.”
Well might the old historians consider worthy of record the reports they had heard of the existence of the “wool-bearing tree,” for, as Dr. Ure has remarked,[36] “it would be universally regarded as a miracle of vegetation did not familiarity blunt the moral feelings of mankind. This class of plants, largely distributed over the torrid zone, affords to the inhabitants a spontaneous and inexhaustible supply of the clothing material best adapted to screen their swarthy bodies from the scorching sun, and to favour the cooling influence of the breeze, as well as cutaneous exhalation. 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. No sooner does the cotton pod arrive at maturity than its swollen capsules burst with an elastic force, in gaping segments, in order, as it were, to display to the most careless eye their white fleecy treasure, and to invite the hand of the observer to pluck it from the seeds, and to work it up into a light and beautiful robe. Thus held forth from the extremity of every bough, by its resemblance to sheep’s wool it could not fail to attract attention.”
[36] ‘The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain,’ p. 71.