"Rooted in Earth each cloven foot descends
And round and round her flexible Neck she bends"
[Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Botanic Garden, 1781]
The Danish doctor and man-of-the-world Ole Worm had in his chambre des merveilles a Scythian Lamb, alternately known as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, the Barometz, and the Planta Tartarica Barometz; the unfortunate possessors of stunted imaginations may also refer to this most marvellous of creatures as Cibotium Barometz or Gossypium. I myself am inclined to believe the Ambassador Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein when he states,
"It had a head, yes, ears, and all other parts a newly born lamb...For myself, although I had previously regarded these Borametz as fabulous, the accounts of it were confirmed to me by so many persons of credence that I thought it right to describe it." [Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii, 1549]
Furthermore, Sir Thomas Browne, although rather unimpressed, adds that
"Much wonder is made of the Boramez, that strange plant-animal or vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which Wolves delight to feed on, which hath the shape of a Lamb, affordeth a bloody juyce upon breaking, and liveth while the plants be consumed about it." [1646, Pseudodoxia Epidemica]
A modern conspiracy exists to cover up the existance of this fantastical being. It has been explained away as a fanciful description of the cotton plant or a particularly hairy species of fern.
