The American Garden. 



Fol. XII. 



MAY, 1 891. 



No. 5. 



GLIMPSES OF OLD HERBALS. 



OLD SUPERSTITIONS THE 



BEGINNINGS OF BOTANICAL SCIENCE- 

 OLD ENGRAVINGS. 



-FAC SIMILES OF 



^TRANGE things were believed in 

 fe'"'the old days. The mystery and 

 the fascination which hang over 

 unknown regions breed in the 

 minds of men ideas of romance 

 and fable even in the present age, 

 ^ and how much more so when, as in 

 times past, the unexplored held 

 such a large place as compared to 

 the known, and appealed so strongly to the imagin- 

 ation ! Indeed, in the earlier periods of human 

 history, to believe was more natural than to doubt, 

 and credulity seemed rather the general than the 

 exceptional condition. It was scarcely out of 

 harmony with the times that Pliny in the first 

 century treats as history the "wonderful forms of 

 different nations," and reports among other mat- 

 ters, tribes of dog-headed people, the Monocoli or 

 one-legged race, who leap, notwithstanding, with 

 surprising agility, and who were also called Scia- 

 podee, because they used their one foot as a shade 

 from the sun ! These lived near the Troglodytes, 

 who were without necks, and had eyes in their 

 shoulders. To those who are willing to believe, 

 nothing seems impossible, and hence travelers' 

 tales often found ready credit. But perhaps the 

 strangest of all these superstitions was that of the 

 Barometz or Scythian lamb, which was reputed to 

 feed on the salt plains west of the Volga. I have 

 selected for illustration the figure of Claude Duret, 

 in his Histotie Admirable des Plantes, 1605. A dif- 

 fering, but equally correct figure appears in Jons- 

 tonus' Dendrologia, editions of 1662 and 1779. 

 Other figures are given by Kirkerus preceding 1660, 

 and De la Croix, 1791. This wonderful plant, on 



the faith of the testimony of "many distinguished 

 men '' as J. Bauhin writes in 1650, had wool, flesh 

 and blood, and a root attached to the navel. We learn 

 that the plant resembled a lamb in every respect, but 

 grew on a stalk about a yard high, and turning 

 about and bending to the herbage, consumed the 

 forage within reach, and then pined away with the 

 failure of the food until it died. Wolves sought it 

 and eat it as if a true lamb. Skeptics existed, 

 however, then as now, and Cardanus in 1556 calls it 

 a fabulous animal, "animal fabulosum." More 

 credence was given, however, by later writers, and 

 it occurs in the botanical works of the period, being 

 tabulated in the Pinax of Caspar Bauhin, 1623 and 

 1671. It is described also, in similar terms, by 

 Matthiolus, 1570; Dalechampius, 1587; J. Bau- 

 hin, 1650; Jonstonus, 1662; Kasmpfer, 1712 ; 

 and a dozen or more authors besides. Mentzelius, 

 in 1682, names it among melons on account of the 

 form of its seed, apparently. Porta, 1591, pre- 

 faces his account with the doubtful phrase "I 

 hear of." In 1725, Dr. Breyne, of Dantzig, de- 

 clared that the Agnus Scyihicics or Barometz, was 

 but the root of a large fern covered with its natural 

 yellow down, and accompanied by some of its 

 stems, which had been placed in museums in an 

 inverted position the better to represent the ap- 

 pearance of the legs and horns of a quadruped. 

 This fern is now the Polypodium Baronieiz of Lin- 

 naeus and Loureiro, the Cibotium Barometz of 

 later authors. So in the name of the fern is pre- 

 served a reference to one of the most remarkable 

 superstitions the world has known. 



It was formerly believed that there grew on the 

 British Islands a tree that produced fruit which 



