We have an interesting record of another journey into Tartary, undertaken almost simultaneously with that of Sir John Mandeville, by Odoricus of Friuli, a Minorite friar belonging to the monastery of Utina, near Padua. The exact date of his departure on his travels is not mentioned, but he returned home in 1330, and the history of his adventures and observations[2] was written in the month of May of that year--thus taking precedence by about thirty years of the narrative of the old English traveller. [2] ‘The Journall of Frier Odoricus of Friuli, one of the order of the Minorites, concerning strange things which he saw amongst the Tartars of the East.’--‘Hakluyt Collection of Early Voyages,’ vol. ii. 1809. See Appendix B. Odoricus, describing his visit to the country of the “Grand Can,” says:--“I heard of another wonder from persons worthy of credit; namely, that in a province of the said Can, in which is the mountain of Capsius[3] (the province is called ‘Kalor’), there grow gourds, which, when they are ripe, open, and within them is found a little beast like unto a young lamb, even as I myself have heard reported that there stand certain trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea bearing fruits like unto a gourd, which at a certain time of the year do fall into the water and become birds called Bernacles; and this is true.” [3] Probably an error of transcription for “Caspius.” The mountain of Caspius (now Kasbin) is about eighty miles due south of the Caspian Sea, and in Persian territory, near Teheran. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--PORTRAIT OF THE “BAROMETZ,” OR “SCYTHIAN LAMB.” _After Claude Duret._] In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the “Scythian Lamb” was made a subject of investigation and argument by some of the most celebrated writers of that period. Fortunio Liceti, Professor of Philosophy at Padua, writing in 1518,[4] gives his complete credence to the story of the little beast like a lamb found within a fruit-pod when it bursts from over-ripeness; and besides the above passage from Odoricus quotes another, by which it would appear that the worthy friar afterwards himself saw this botanical curiosity, and described it as being “as white as snow.” I have been unable to find this paragraph in the Hakluyt edition of Odoricus’s travels. [4] ‘_De Spontaneo Viventium Ortu_,’ lib. 3, cap. 45. Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, however, in his ‘_Historia Naturæ_’ (Antwerp, 1605), also quotes these two passages, and in exactly the same words. He probably copied them from Liceti, and not from the original.