“The traveller who ploughs the Caspian wave For Asia bound, where foaming breakers lave Borysthenes’ wild shores, no sooner lands Than gazing in astonishment he stands; For in his path he sees a monstrous birth, The Borametz arises from the earth: Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute, A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit, It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes, And from its brows two woolly horns arise. The rude and simple country people say It is an animal that sleeps by day And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground, To feed on grass within its reach around. The flavour of Ambrosia its flesh Pervades; and the red nectar, rich and fresh, Which vineyards of fair Burgundy produce Is less delicious than its ruddy juice. If Nature had but on it feet bestowed, Or with a voice to bleat the lamb endowed, To cry for help against the threat’ning fangs Of hungry wolves; as on its stalk it hangs, Seated on horseback it might seem to ride, Whit’ning with thousands more the mountain side.” [Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE “BORAMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.” _From De la Croix’s ‘Connubia Florum.’_ The central figure is a copy of Zahn’s picture of the fabulous plant-animal; the other two are taken from fern-root specimens supposed to be “Vegetable Lambs.”] We must now leave the poetical view of the subject, and come to facts. The substance of which the artificial animals exhibited by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn were constructed is the long root-stock of a fern of the genus _Dicksonia_, of which there are from thirty to thirty-five species, varying greatly in size, in their mode of growth, and in the cutting of their fronds. Some of them, such as _D. antarctica_, a native of Australia and New Zealand, often seen in our greenhouses, are tree-like in habit, having stems from ten to forty feet in height, and fronds two or three yards in length, and two feet or more across; whilst others have root-stocks creeping along the surface of the ground. The genus is most fully represented in tropical America and Polynesia: one species extends as far north as the United States and Canada, and another was introduced into this country from St. Helena. In some species, such as _D. Molluccensis_, from Java, the stems are furnished with strong hooked prickles; in others they are densely clad at the base with a thick coat of yellow-brown hairs, which shine almost like burnished gold. The stems of _D. Sellowiana_, from tropical America, are so thickly clad with long fibrous hairs, changing to brown or nearly black, that it has been said they precisely resemble the thighs of the howling monkeys.[23]