The next traveller, in order of date, who made the Tartarian Lamb the object of his investigations was Dr. Engelbrecht Kaempfer, who, in 1683, accompanied an embassy to Persia, and was appointed Surgeon to the Dutch East India Company two years later. He reported, on his return, that he had searched “_ad risum et nauseam_” for this “zoophyte feeding on grass,” that there was nothing in the country where it was believed to grow that was called “Borametz,” except the ordinary sheep, and that all accounts of a sheep growing upon a plant were mere fiction and fable. “The word ‘Borametz,’” he says,[14] “is a corruption of the Russian ‘Boranetz,’ in Polish ‘Baranak,’ the diminutive of which, ‘Baran,’ is Sclavonic. In such a case it signifies ‘a sheep.’ But,” he continues, “there is in some of the provinces near the Caspian Sea a breed of sheep totally different from those with which we are commonly acquainted, and highly valued for the elegance of the skin, which is used in various articles of clothing by the Tartars and Persians. For the magnates and the rich who desire a material superior to that worn by the general population, the skins of the youngest lambs are preserved, the fleeces of these being much softer that those of the older ones, and the younger the animal from which they are taken the more costly are they.” He then refers to the barbarous custom of killing the ewes before the time of natural parturition to obtain possession of the immature fleece of the unborn lamb, and says, correctly, that the earlier the stage of pregnancy in which this operation is performed the finer and softer is the fur of the fœtal skin, and the lighter and closer are the little curls for which it is chiefly prized. The pelt, also, is so thin that it is scarcely heavier than a membrane, and, in drying, it frequently shrinks so as to lose all similitude to the skin of a lamb, and assumes a form which might lead the ignorant and credulous to believe that it was a woolly gourd. He, therefore, conjectures that some of these dried and shrunken skins may have been placed in museums as examples of the fleece of the “Tartarian Lamb,” under the supposition that they were of vegetable origin. [14] ‘_Amœnitatum Exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum fasciculi_,’ x., lib. 3, obs. 1. Lemgo, 1712. Kaempfer’s MSS. and collections were acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, and were deposited in the British Museum. Kaempfer’s suggestions were ingenious, though his theory was erroneous. But, although he rather impeded than assisted in the correct identification of the object of discussion, he, at least, helped to discredit the myth, which he declared to be one of those “received with favour by the superstitious, and which when once they have found a writer to describe them, however incorrectly, please the many, obtain numerous adherents, and become respectable by age.”