PENGIIAWAR DJAMBI. 



123 



Scythian 

 Lamb. 



Having examined an ancient specimen of the so-called isse. 

 Scythian Lamb preserved in the British Museum, 1 as well as a 

 living plant of Cibotium Barometz, J. Sin., I must confess I find 

 them far more to resemble each other than they do the Suma- 

 tran Penghawar. It must, however, be borne in mind that 

 a plant having a range so extensive as to embrace Assam, 

 China, the Philippines and the Islands" of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago, may be expected to vary considerably according to 

 the soil, the situation, and the degree of moisture and heat in 

 which it may grow, so that I am far from impugning the 

 correctness of referring both productions to one and the same 

 plant. 



As I have alluded to the fatle of the Scythian Lamb, and it Fable of the 

 may not be familiar to all readers, I may be allowed briefly to 

 recall it, although to cite one half of the old authors of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who have delighted to 

 tell of its wonders, would be neither an easy nor a very 

 profitable task. 



Suffice it, then, to say that Agnus Scythicus, Frutex Tartareus, 

 or Vegetable Laml was regarded as a sort of plant-animal, re- 

 sembling in figure a lamb, whence its Russian name larometz. Barometz. 

 It was said to spring from a seed like a plant, and to be attached 

 to the earth by a root, while in its animal nature it rejoiced 

 in a sort of flesh and blood, browsed upon the surrounding 

 herbs by turning round upon its axis or root, until, having 

 devoured all within reach, it perished a victim to hunger ! 



Poetry and Materia Medica are not now-a-days in close 

 alliance, but such was not the case in the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century ; and the author who could write an ode 

 on Tacamahaca, Tamarinds, or Cochineal, could have no 

 difficulty in producing a sonnet on so much more poetic a 

 theme as the Scythian lamb. 



Guillaume Saluste, Sieur du Bartas, represents the astonish- The vegetable 

 ment of our first parents at discovering in the garden of Eden 



lamb. 



1 Probably the same specimen as is excellently figured in Kymsdyk's 

 Mustum Britannicum, Loud., 1791, foL Tab. xv., Jig. 2. 



