JOHN PARKINSON 145 



to be found in the ancient descriptions of the cotton plant by 

 Herodotus, Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny and others. 1 The following 

 passages in Herodotus and Pliny will suffice to show how easily 

 the myth may have grown. " Certain trees bear for their fruit 

 fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence " 

 (Herodotus). " These trees bear gourds the size of a quince which 

 burst when ripe and display balls of wool out of which the 

 inhabitants make cloths like valuable linen " (Pliny). 



In his Theatrum Botanicum Parkinson describes the " Scythian 

 Lamb/' and one gathers that he accepted the travellers' tales 

 about it. " This strange living plant as it is reported by divers 

 good authors groweth among the Tartares about Samarkand and 

 the parts thereabouts rising from a seede somewhat bigger and 

 rounder than a Melon seede with a stalk about five palmes high 

 without any leafe thereon but onely bearing a certaine fruit and 

 the toppe in forme resembling a small lambe, whose coate or 

 rinde is woolly like unto a Lambe's skinne, the pulp or meat 

 underneath, which is like the flesh of a Lobster, having it is 

 sayed blood also in it ; it hath the forme of an head hanging down 

 and feeding on the grasse round about it untill it hath consumed 

 it and then dyeth or else will perish if the grasse round about it 

 bee cut away of purpose. It hath foure legges also hanging downe. 

 The wolves much affect to feed on them." 



The preface to the Paradisus is singularly beautiful, being 

 typical of the simple, devout-minded author, but it is too long to 

 quote. The book itself is truly " a speaking garden," a tranquil, 

 spacious Elizabethan garden, full of the loveliness, colour and 

 scent of damask, musk and many other roses ; of lilies innumerable 

 the crown imperial, the gold and red lilies, the Persian lily 

 (" brought unto Constantinople and from thence sent unto us 

 by Mr. Nicholas Lete, a worthy Merchant and a lover of all faire 

 flowers "), the blush Martagon, the bright red Martagon of 



1 See Herodotus (lib. iii. cap. 106), Ctesias (Indica) ; Strabo (lib. xv. 

 cap. 21) ; Theophrastus De Historia Plantarum (lib. iv. cap. 4) ; Pliny, Naturalis 

 Historia. 



L 



