The fable of the existence of a mysterious “plant-animal” variously entitled “_The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary_,” “_The Scythian Lamb_,” and “_The Barometz_,” or “_Borametz_,” is one of the curious myths of the Middle Ages with which I have been long acquainted. Until the year 1883, not having given serious thought to it, or made it a subject of critical examination, I had been content to accept as correct the explanation of it now universally adopted; namely, that it originated from certain little lamb-like toy figures ingeniously constructed by the Chinese from the rhizome and frond-stems of a tree-fern, which, from its identification with the object of the fable, has received the name of _Dicksonia Barometz_. But during my researches in the works of ancient writers when preparing the manuscript of my two books, ‘_Sea Monsters Unmasked_,’ and ‘_Sea Fables Explained_,’ I came upon passages of old authors which convinced me that these toy “lambs” made from ferns by the Chinese had no more connexion with the story of “_The Vegetable Lamb_” than the artificial mermaids so cleverly constructed by the Japanese were the cause and origin of the ancient and world-wide belief in mermaids. Subsequent investigations have confirmed this opinion. I have found that all of these old myths which I have been able to trace to their source have originated in a perfectly true statement of some curious and interesting fact; which statement has been so garbled and distorted, so misrepresented and perverted in repetition by numerous writers, that in the course of centuries its original meaning has been lost, and a monstrous fiction has been substituted for it. “Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” says the adage; and in searching for the origin of these old myths and legends, the deeper we can dive down into the past the greater is the probability of our discovering the truth concerning them. To obtain a clue to the identity of “_The Scythian Lamb_” we must consult the pages of historians and philosophers who lived and wrote from eighteen to sixteen centuries before Sir John Mandeville published his version of the story; and, having there found set before us the real “_Vegetable Lamb_” in all its truthful simplicity and beauty, we shall be able to recognise its form and features under the various disguises it was made to assume by the wonder-mongers of the Middle Ages.