The Oyster-bearing Tree, however, is not the only marvel of which the good Bishop has left a record: he tells us that near the island Cimbalon there lies another, where grows a tree whose leaves, as they fall off, change into animals: they are no sooner on the ground, than they begin to walk like a hen, upon two little legs. Pigafetta says that he kept one of these leaves eight days in a porringer; that it took itself to walking as soon as he touched it; and that it lived only upon the air. Scaliger, speaking of these very leaves, remarks, as though he had been an eye-witness, that they walk, and march away without further ado if anyone attempts to touch them. Bauhin, after describing these wonderful leaves as being very like Mulberry-leaves, but with two short and pointed feet on each side, remarks upon the great prodigy of the leaf of a tree being changed into an animal, obtaining sense, and being capable of progressive motion. [Illustration: TO FACE PAGE 121.] The Barometz, or Vegetable Lamb. _From Zahn’s ‘Speculæ Physico-Mathematico-Historicæ.’_] Kircher records that in his time a tree was said to exist in Chili, the leaves of which produced worms; upon arriving at maturity, these worms crawled to the edge of the leaf, and thence fell to the earth, where after a time they became changed into serpents, which over-ran the whole land. Kircher endeavours to explain this story of the serpent-bearing tree by giving, as a reason for the phenomenon, that the tree attached to itself, through its roots, moisture pregnant with the seed of serpents. Through the action of the sun’s rays, and the moisture of the tree, this serpent-spawn degenerates into worms, which by contact with the earth become converted into living serpents. The same authority states that in the Molucca islands, but more particularly in Ternate, not far from the castle of the same name, there grew a plant which he describes as having small leaves. To this plant the natives gave the name of _Catopa_, because when its leaves fall off they at once become changed into butterflies. Doctor Darwin, in his botanical poem called ‘The Loves of the Plants,’ thus apostrophises an extraordinary animal-bearing plant:-- “Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air, Shines, gentle Barometz! thy golden hair; Rooted in earth, each cloven hoof descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends; Crops the gray coral-moss and hoary Thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime, Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, Or seems to bleat, a vegetable Lamb.” In the curious frontispiece to Parkinson’s ‘Paradisus,’ which will be found reproduced at the commencement of this work, it will be noticed that the Barometz, or Vegetable Lamb, is represented as one of the plants growing in Eden. In Zahn’s _Speculæ Physico-Mathematico-Historicæ_ (1696) is given a figure of this plant, accompanied by a description, of which the following is a translation:--