168 CURIOUS CREATURES. , 



same explanation, only substituting ' They aim arrows 

 at the stem until it is ruptured/ &c. 



" The author of an ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia 

 (Venice, 1705), gives an interesting description of this 

 animal. In Part IV. c. 10, page 786, he mentions the 

 Borametz found in Great Tartary. He repeats the 

 description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds, that he has 

 found, in ' A New Work on Geography,' namely, that 

 ' the Africans (sic) in Great Tartary, in the province 

 of Sambulala, are enriched by means of seeds, like the 

 seeds of gourds, only shorter in size, which grow and 

 blossom like a stem to the navel of an animal which is 

 called Borametz in their language, i.e. lamb, on account 

 of its resembling a lamb in all its limbs, from head to 

 foot ; its hoofs are cloven, its skin is soft, its wool is 

 adapted for clothing, but it has no horns, only the hairs 

 of its head, which grow, and are intertwined like horns. 

 Its height is half a cubit and more. According to those 

 who speak of this wondrous thing, its taste is like the 

 flesh of fish, its blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as 

 long as there is herbage within reach of the stem, from 

 which it derives its life. If the herbage is destroyed or 

 perishes, the animal also dies away. It has rest from all 

 beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, which seeks to 

 destroy it.' The author concludes by expressing his be- 

 lief that this account of the animal having the shape of a 

 lamb is more likely to be true than it is of human form." 



As I have said, there are several delineations of this 

 Borametz or Borometz, but there is one, a frontispiece to 

 the 1656 edition of the Paridisi in Sole Paradisus Ter- 

 restris,of John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, in which, 

 together with Adam and Eve, the lamb-free is shown as 

 flourishing in the Garden of Eden ; and Du Bartas, in 



