Lamb-producing Trees. 
145 
Colchester, and Southampton, were crowded with refugees, 
who brought over superior machinery as well as better 
taste, and contributed to the lasting prosperity of the 
country which gave them a new home. Towards the close 
of Elizabeth’s reign, an event occurred which affected 
every branch of commerce, and which opened an almost 
unlimited market for English woollen goods. The East 
India Company came into existence on the last day of 
the sixteeenth century. On the 31st of December, 1600, 
Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to George, Earl of 
Cumberland, and two hundred and fifteen knights, aider- 
men, and merchants— 
“ that, at their own cost and charges, . . . they might set forth one or 
more voyages to the East Indians, in the country and parts of Asia 
and Africa, and to the Islands thereabouts,. .. divers of which countries, 
islands, &c., have long sithence been discovered by others of our 
subjects; to be one body politic and corporate, by the name of, the 
Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading to the East 
Indies.” 
The whole of the document, of which the above is a part, 
may be found in Anderson’s Origin of Commerce , already 
quoted. 
Sir John Mandeville professes to have discovered a 
tree whereon gourds containing little beasts like lambs 
were to be seen hanging in clusters :— 
“And there [somewhere beyond Cathay] growethe a maner of 
fruyt, as thoughe it were gowrdes, and whan they ben rype, men kutten 
hem a to, and men fynden with inne a lytylle best, in flessche, in bon, 
and blode, as though it wer a lytylle lomb, with outen wolle and men 
eten bothe the frut and the best; and that is a gret marveyle. Of that 
frute I have eten.” ( Travels, p. 264.) 
The author proceeds to crush any doubts that might 
arise in his reader’s mind by citing the similar develop¬ 
ment of the barnacle tree into a bird. 
Of Goats there is little to be said. Harrison writes, 
“ Goats we have plentie.and of sundrie cplours 
in the west parts of England ; especiallie in 
L 
