The story of a wonderful plant which bore living lambs for its fruit, and grew in Tartary, seems to have been first brought into public notice in England in the reign of Edward III., by Sir John Mandeville, the “Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countreis, to se mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and diverse shap of men and of beistis.” In the 26th chapter of the book in which he “wrot and telleth all the mervaile that he say,” and which he dedicated to the King, he treats of “the Countreis and Yles that ben beȝond the Lond of Cathay, and of the Frutes there”; and amongst the curiosities he met with in the dominions of the “Cham” of Tartary he mentions the following:-- [Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE VEGETABLE LAMB PLANT. _After Sir John Mandeville._ This plate illustrates that version of the Fable by which the “Vegetable Lamb” is represented as contained within a fruit, or seed-pod, which, when ripe, bursts open, and discloses the little lamb within it.] “Now schalle I seye ȝou semyngly of Countrees and Yles that ben beȝonde the Countrees that I have spoken of. Wherefore I seye you in passynge be the Lond of Cathaye toward the high Ynde, and towards Bacharye, men passen be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldilhe: that is a fair Contree. And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as though it weren Gowrdes: and whan thei ben rype men kutten hem ato, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in Flesche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle Lomb with outen Wolle. And Men eten both the Frut and the Best; and that is a great Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eaten; alle thoughe it were wondirfulle, but that I knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes.”[1] [1] ‘The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knt.’ See Appendix A. Sir John Mandeville appears to have never previously heard of this strange plant, but reports of its existence under various phases may be traced back, as we shall presently see, to a date at least eighteen hundred years earlier than that of his mention of it. As it is in the works of these older writers that we shall find the long-sought key of the mystery, we will set them aside for the present and follow the growth and dissemination of the fable. Claude Duret, of Moulins, who, in his ‘_Histoire Admirable des Plantes_ (1605),’ devotes to it a chapter entitled “The Boramets of Scythia, or Tartary, true Zoophytes or plant-animals; that is to say, plants living and sensitive like animals,” therein says:--