The most interesting feature of this elaborately illustrated title-page is the representation of the "Vegetable Lamb" growing on a stalk and browsing on the herbage round about it.[90] This records one of the most curious myths of the Middle Ages. The creature was also known as the Scythian Lamb and the Borametz or Barometz, a name derived from a Tartar word signifying "lamb." It was supposed to be at once a true animal and a living plant, and was said to grow in the territory of the "Tartars of the East," formerly called Scythia. According to some writers, the lamb was the fruit of a tree, whose fruit or seed-pod, when fully ripe, burst open and disclosed a little lamb perfect in every way. This was the subject of the illustration, "The Vegetable Lamb plant," in Sir John Mandeville's book. Other writers described the lamb as being supported above the ground by a stalk flexible enough to allow the animal to feed on the herbage growing near. When it had consumed all within its reach the stem withered and the lamb died. This is the version illustrated on Parkinson's title-page. It was further reported that the lamb was a favourite food of wolves, but that no other carnivorous animals would attack it. This remarkable legend obtained credence for at least 400 years. So far as is known, the first mention of it in an English book is the account given by Sir John Mandeville, "the Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countries to se mervailes and customes of countreis and diversiters of folkys and diverse shap of men and of beistis." It is in the chapter describing the curiosities he met with in the dominions of the "Cham" of Tartary that the passage about the vegetable lamb occurs.[91] The origin of this extraordinary myth is undoubtedly to be found in the ancient descriptions of the cotton plant by Herodotus, Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny and others.[92] 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). [Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF PARKINSON'S "PARADISUS" (1629)]