“Who cannot see plainly that Cardano, after having long doubted, and after having adduced philosophical arguments drawn from the works of Aristotle and other eminent writers, felt himself obliged and condemned to confess that in a place filled with heavy and dense air (such as is Tartary) the Borametz--true plant-animals--might exist as described, as well as sponges, ‘sea-nettles,’ and ‘sea-lungs,’ which every one knows are true zoophytes, or animal-plants.” After this amusing assumption that the air of Tartary possesses the “weight” and “density” necessary for the production of plant-animals, Duret quotes from Sir John Mandeville’s book in the language in which it was originally written--the Romanic--the passage which I have extracted from the old English version of the enterprising knight’s ‘Voiage and Travailes,’ and also cites, in confirmation of the prodigy, the account given of it by the Baron Von Herberstein. He then strongly expresses his own belief that-- “Of all the strange and marvellous trees, shrubs, plants and herbs which Nature, or, rather, God himself, has produced, or ever will produce in this Universe, there will never be seen anything so worthy of admiration and contemplation as these ‘Borametz’ of Scythia, or Tartary,--plants which are also animals, and which browze and eat as quadrupeds.... If I did not entirely believe this I would denounce it as fabulous, instead of accepting it as a fact; but those who are in the habit of daily studying good and rare books, printed and in manuscript, and who are endowed with great wisdom and understanding, know that there is no impossibility in Nature, _i.e._ God himself, to whom be all the honour and glory!” Besides the authors already quoted, and others who merely copied the narratives of their predecessors, Guillaume de Saluste, the Sieur du Bartas, accepted as authentic the story of the Vegetable Lamb. In his poem “_La Semaine_,” published in 1578, in which the first few days of the existence of all terrestrial things are described reverently and with considerable power, he represents this plant as one of those which excited the astonishment of the newly-created Adam as he wandered on the first day of the second week through the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise in which he had been placed.