MARCH 53 



I have no doubt whatever that it originated in early 

 descriptions of the cotton plant, and the introduction of 

 cotton from India into Western Asia and the adjoining 

 parts of Eastern Europe.' All this seems so simple as 

 explained by Mr. Lee, how the early travellers came back 

 and said, ' In the far East there is a tree on which grows 

 the most beautiful fine wool, and the natives weave their 

 garments of it.' The Western mind could conceive of no 

 wool except that of a lamb ; in this way the fiction grew, 

 and was passed on from one writer to another. In a 

 poem by Erasmus Darwin, published in 1781, of which 

 more hereafter, it is alluded to as a plant that grew on 

 the steppes of the Volga in the following terms : 



E'en round the Pole the flames of love aspire, 

 And icy bosoms feel the sacred fire. 

 Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air, 

 Shines, gentle Borametz, thy golden hair ; 

 Booted in earth, each cloven foot descends, 

 And round and round her flexile neck she bends, 

 Crops the grey coral moss and hoary thyme 

 Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime ; 

 Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, 

 And seems to bleat a ' vegetable lamb.' 



Curiously enough, when in Norway last year, I came 

 across an old wooden chair, and the back was carved in 

 a way that seems to me conclusively to represent this 

 old tradition. The design is a lamb enclosed in a circular 

 cocoon, surrounded by branches and leaves. This chair 

 I have now. 



In the ' Nineteenth Century ' of January 1880, there 

 appeared a very interesting article on Parkinson's 

 ' Paradisi in Sole,' called ' Old-fashioned Gardening,' by 

 Mrs. Kegan Paul. She describes the title-page, and says, 

 1 The tree of knowledge, its fruit still unplucked by Adam, 

 appears in the centre of the plate.' I thought we were 



