1 66 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



its limits ; but when it had consumed all the grass within 

 its reach, or if the stalk was severed, it died. This lamb 

 was said to have the actual body, blood, and bones of a 

 young sheep, and wolves were very fond of it but, 

 luckily for the lamb-tree, these were the only carnivo- 

 rous animals that would attack it. 



In his " Histoire Admirable des Plantes " (1605) Claude 

 Duret, of Moulins, treats of the Borometz, and says : " I 

 remember to have read some time ago, in a very ancient 

 Hebrew book entitled in Latin the Talmud leroso- 

 lintitanum, and written by a Jewish Rabbi Jochanan, 

 assisted by others, in the year of Salvation 436, that a 

 certain personage named Moses Chusensis (he being a 

 native of Ethiopia) affirmed, on the authority of Rabbi 

 Simeon, that there was a certain country of the earth 

 which bore a zoophyte, or plant-animal, called in the 

 Hebrew Jcduah. It was in form like a lamb, and from 

 its navel, grew a stem or root by which this Zoophyte, 

 or plant-animal, was fixed attached, like a gourd, to the 

 soil below the surface of the ground, and, according to 

 the length of its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage 

 which it was able to reach within the circle of its tether. 

 The hunters who went in search of this creature were 

 unable to capture, or remove it, until they had succeeded 

 in cutting the stem by well-aimed arrows, or darts, when 

 the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth, and 

 died. Its bones being placed with certain ceremonies 

 and incantations in the mouth of one desiring to foretell 

 the future, he was instantly seized with a spirit of divina- 

 tion, and endowed with the gift of prophecy." 



Mr. Lee then says : " As I was unable to find in 

 the Latin translation of the Talmud of Jerusalem, the 

 passage mentioned by Claude Duret, and was anxious 



