About the middle of the seventeenth century very little belief in the story of the “Scythian Lamb” remained amongst men of letters, although it continued to be a subject of discussion and research for at least a hundred and fifty years later. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--ADAM AND EVE ADMIRING THE PLANTS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN. THE “VEGETABLE LAMB” IN THE BACKGROUND. _Fac-simile of the Frontispiece of Parkinson’s “Paradisus”_] Athanasius Kircher, Professor of Mathematics at Avignon, who wrote[12] in 1641, after following the error of his predecessors of quoting Scaliger as a believer in the myth, says:-- [12] ‘_Magnes; sive de arte magneticâ opus tripartitum_,’ p. 730. “Some authors have regarded it as an animal, some as a plant; whilst others have classed it as a true zoophyte. In order not to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a plant. Though its form be that of a quadruped, and the juice beneath its woolly covering be blood which flows if an incision be made in its flesh, these things will not move us. It will be found to be a plant.” This unwavering prediction has been fulfilled. But the story had to pass through many vicissitudes of acceptance and disbelief before this decision of Kircher was unanimously admitted to be correct. It seems to have been the fate of this curious fable, through the whole period of its history, that no sooner has a ray of some author’s common sense penetrated the mist of superstition by which it was surrounded than it has been again befogged by the ignorant credulity of the next writer on the subject. Jans Janszoon Strauss, a Dutchman, better known as Jean de Struys, who travelled through many countries, and amongst them Tartary, from 1647 to 1672, describes[13] this vegetable wonder. But he was an uneducated and credulous man, and his account of it is little more than a repetition of the errors and fallacies of former centuries concerning it, rendered still more incomprehensible by his having confused with its “very white down, as soft as silk,” the Astrachan lamb-skins, which were then, and are still, a well-known article of commerce. He says:-- [13] ‘_Voyages de Jean de Struys en Moscovie, en Tartarie, et en Perse_,’ chap. xii. p. 167. Amsterdam. 1681. Also an English translation, “done out of Dutch,” by John Morrison. London. 1684. See Appendix E.