I venture to believe that the reader who will kindly follow my argument (p. 42, _et seq._) will agree with me that the rumour which spread from Western Asia all over Europe, and was a subject of discussion by learned men during many centuries, of the existence of “a tree bearing fruit, or seed-pods, which when they ripened and burst open were seen to contain little lambs, of whose soft white fleeces Eastern people wove material for their clothing,” was a plant of far higher importance to mankind than the paltry toy animals made by the Chinese from the root of a fern, of which gew-gaws only four specimens are known to have been brought to this country. It seems to me clear and indisputable that the rumour referred to the cotton-pod, and originated in the first introduction of cotton and the fabrics woven from it into Eastern Europe. It will be seen that the explanation of the process by which the truthful report of a remarkable fact was in time perverted into the detailed history of an absurd fiction is very easy and intelligible. As this little book was originally intended for publication, like its predecessors before-mentioned, as a hand-book in connection with the Literary Department of the South Kensington Exhibitions, I have treated in a separate chapter of the history of cotton, its use by ancient races in Asia, Africa, and America, and its gradual introduction amongst the nations of Europe. The various stages of its progress Westward were so distinctly and intimately dependent on many remarkable events in the world’s history, by which its advance was alternately retarded and facilitated, that the annals of the “_vegetable wool_” which holds so important a place amongst the manufacturing industries of Great Britain are hardly less romantic than the fable of “_The Vegetable Lamb_,” which was its forerunner. HENRY LEE. SAVAGE CLUB. _May, 1887._ THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY A CURIOUS FABLE OF THE COTTON PLANT. CHAPTER I. THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.