'Sir Richard Lee, travaylinge homewards, came to the Kinge of Swethlandes court, who demaunded of him of diverse thinges of the cuntrie of Muscovia; and, amongest other thinges, asked him whether he had seene the aforesaid garment, and he answered, that he had not only seene it, but had it in his possession; whereat the Kinge of Swethland admired, sayinge he had longe laboured to get it for loue or money, but could neuer obtayne it.
'Sir Rich. Lee in this iourney had not onely gotten this garment and Tartar lambeskyns, but diverse other rich furres and other rarities of great price; the greatest part whereof the Queene tooke of him, and promised him recompence for them, which she neuer performed; which was partly the cause that he concealed this garment from her duringe her life. And when Sir Rich. Lee died himselfe, he by his will gaue it to the Library in Oxford, to be kept as a monument there, beinge, as he conceiued, the fittest place for a jewell of so great worth and æstimation as that is or ought to be.
'Sir Rich. Lee was the neere kinseman of my wife; by reason whereof, I was very familiarly acquaynted with him; and vppon conference had with him about his trauayles at sundry times, I had the true relation of all the premisses from his owne mouthe. And I comminge to Oxford to the Act, and findinge this garment in Sir Tho. Bodley's studdie or closet, without any expression made of the raritie or worth
of this garment, did discouer so much as I haue herein written to Mr. Russe, the Keeper of the Library; at whose request I haue sett it downe, in writinge. And in testimonie of the truthe thereof, I haue herevnto subscribed my name, the 13th of July, 1624.
'EDWARD SMYTHE.
'Transcribed out of the originall with Mr. Russe.
'This Mr. Smyth was a Counsellor of the Temple.'
It appears from this account that the box of scented wood ordered by the Curators in 1614 had never been provided, and that the cloak was already beginning to be neglected. Doubtless suspicion had been early excited as to the truth of the traveller's story which had accompanied the gift, and which could scarcely have obtained real credence later than the days of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville. In the Ashmolean Museum a painting is preserved which represents the Agnus Scythicus in its fabled state; a full-grown lamb poised on the top of a vegetable stalk, with its legs dependent in the air[365]. But the key to the mystery is attached in the label on the frame: 'Polypodium Barometz. Linn.' It is, in truth, only a large fern found in Tartary, of which the rhizoma is covered with the woolly fungus-like growth, found in greater or less degree on many species of ferns. If the plant be dug up and inverted, the roots being uppermost and the fronds pendent, a strong imagination might find some resemblance in the former to a wool-clad body, and in the latter to limbs, while some of the young fronds with their spiral convolutions might be compared to the horns of a ram, such as are duly represented in the painting mentioned above. A specimen of the plant may be seen in the greenhouses of the Botanic Garden, Oxford, where it is still known by the name which the fable imposed, Agnus Scythicus. So great is the woolly growth found upon one species of tree-fern in New Zealand, that (as the writer was informed by Mr. Baxter, the Keeper of the Botanic Garden) tons of it are yearly imported into this country for the purpose of stuffing cushions. A finer and silkier substance is found on a fern indigenous in Mexico.
[365] For acquaintance with this picture the author is indebted to Mr. Rowell, whose scientific knowledge so well fits him for the post he worthily holds as Under-keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. In Tradescant's Catalogue of the first contents of this Museum as formed by himself, published in 1656, occurs 'a coat lyned with Agnus Scythicus,' but it does not now exist in the collection.