20 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS, 



" 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 gray coral-moss and hoarj' thyme, 

 Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime. 

 Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam. 

 Or seems to bleat, a vegetable lamb." 



In the frontispiece to Parkinson's " Paradisus " the 

 Barometz, or vegetable lamb, is represented as one of 

 the plants growing in Eden. The woolly body of the 

 lamb, with its golden hair, is supposed to be the hairy 

 rhizome, or bases of the stipes of Cibotbmi Baromets, 

 the legs being the stipes of four fronds. The figure 

 given by Zahn (1696) is by no means like one we 

 have met with in some old work, which has been 

 introduced, reduced in size, into the " Treasury of 

 Botany." The translation of Zahn's remarks runs as 

 follows : " Very wonderful is the Tartarian shrub or 

 plant, which the natives calls Baroniez, i.e. Lamb. It 

 grows like a lamb, to about the height of three feet. 

 It resembles a lamb in feet, in hoofs, in ears, and in 

 the whole head, save the horns. For horns, it pos- 

 sesses tufts of hair, resembling a horn in appearance. 

 It is covered with the thinnest bark, which is taken 

 off and used by the inhabitants for the protection of 

 their heads. They say that the inner pulp resembles 

 lobster flesh, and that blood flows from it when it is 

 wounded. Its root projects and rises to the umbilicus. 

 What renders the wonder more remarkable, is the 

 fact that, when the Baromez is surrounded by abun- 

 dant herbage, it lives as long as a lamb in pleasant 

 pastures ; but when they become exhausted, it wastes 

 away and perishes. It is said that wolves have a 



