WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Vegetable Lamb, Part 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.440 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:09.520 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.280 And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're heading into 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:16.960 the Old Vault. This episode originally aired April twenty first, 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.000 twenty twenty two, and it's part two of our series 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.080 on the vegetable Lamb of Tartary. 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:27.200 Dig in sounds delicious. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:39.639 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:40.360 is Robert. 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.200 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:47.120 two of our series on the vegetable Lamb of Tartary, 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.080 a legendary creature that appeared in medieval and Renaissance European 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:57.240 bestiaries and travelogs, such as the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.560 If you haven't heard part one of this series yet, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:01.240 this is one where you should really go back and 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.280 check that out first so you'll know what we're talking 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.600 about today. But if you're rejoining us after last time, 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.479 a quick refresher on these legends. The idea was that 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.840 somewhere in Tartary, which is a vast stretch of the 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:19.920 Asian mainland, including what is now Central Asia, parts of China, 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.240 all of Mongolia, and the whole eastern part of Russia. 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.720 There was said to live a type of zoophyte or 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.720 plant animally a creature with both animal and vegetable properties, 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:35.880 combining aspects of a sort of bush or shrub with 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:40.319 a sheep or a lamb. And some sources, like Sir 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:45.560 John Mandeville describe a plant that grows gourd like fruits, 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.560 and when you cut these gourds open, they reveal fully 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:53.640 formed lambs inside, tiny little lambs which have flesh and 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.840 bone and blood. He says, they're real lambs, and I 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:59.919 ate one of the lambs and it was good. Others 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.040 or is describe something even more fantastical. I think these 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.840 are usually sources that come a little bit later than Mandeville. 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.960 They say that there is a plant that grows a 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:14.720 fully formed adult lamb or sheep, which is attached to 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.919 the ground via a plant stem that grows into its stomach, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.480 and the lamb can only survive while there is still 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.520 herbage for it to graze on within the radius of 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.760 the stem, so the stem is kind of like a tether, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:30.560 and once it eats all of the grass within reach, 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.360 it starves to death unless it is killed and eaten 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:37.040 by wolves or by humans first. And this lamb or 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.000 sheep is also said to be a real animal in composition, 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:44.720 having bones and blood and in whichever form. This creature 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.200 is known under many different names, but the most commons 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:49.880 the most common ones would be like the lamb of Tartary, 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.480 the Tartar lamb, or the Boromets or the Barromets. Now, 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:56.640 toward the end of the last episode, we talked about 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:01.200 phylogenetic reasons that you would not expect to actually see 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.720 an organism like this, so we can be pretty sure, 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.560 without knowing anything else, that this did not actually exist. 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.160 Because of course, plants and animals may have many individual 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:16.079 characteristics that are superficially similar, whether for some adapted reason 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.960 like mimicry or just by chance converging ecological needs and 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:23.040 so forth, but a plant will never actually grow a 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.840 sheep that has actual muscle, flesh, and bones and blood. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.239 So the question is where did these legends actually come from? 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.680 And a couple of major explanations have been offered over 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.360 the centuries. One very good source that I referred to 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:39.480 in the last episode, and I'm going to keep talking 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.880 about in this one is a book by a nineteenth 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.360 century English naturalist named Henry Lee, and it's called The 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.920 Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. This was published in eighteen eighty seven. 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.160 Now, in that Karuba paper that I referenced in the 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:58.360 first episode, the author points out that that various folks 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.920 over over the years sort of the mythic era of 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:04.240 the bora mets ever since at least you know, the 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:09.120 seventeenth century, during that period where commentators have known that 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:10.920 there's no such thing, but have been curious as to 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.040 why such a thing might have been invented, and invented 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:19.480 over time that that you know, various folks have chimed 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.760 in on it and brought up various plant specimens, quote 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.760 natural and manipulated to possibly explain it. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:26.320 Right. 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.520 And so one of the possible explanations that has been 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:35.600 brought forth was the the wooly fern explanation and this 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.080 is this is one of the possible explanations that Rose 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.800 mentions Carol Rose mentions in passing and specifically it was 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:46.040 suggested that the fern's rhizome or you know, the root 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.720 system might be the lamb in question. And this is 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:55.800 actually reflected in the scientific name for this species, Subodium borromets, 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.480 and it's also known as the golden chicken fern. And 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.440 I I did a picture of this for you, Joe. 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:04.960 I actually ended up going to the Atlanta Botanical Garden 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:07.640 over the weekend, and I didn't get a chance to 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:09.360 ask anybody if they had one of these around, But 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:12.039 I kept looking. I was on the lookout for this 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:17.960 chicken fern, for this possible explanation for the vegetable lamb 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:19.600 of tardary, but I did not see it. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.880 Yeah, a nice furry fern, I mean, does look an 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:27.760 awful lot like fur. This explanation, I believe first arose 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:30.680 at the end of the seventeenth century. So, as we 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.080 discussed in the previous part, by this time authors were 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.920 already skeptical of the zoophyte story and they started coming 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.800 up with alternative ways of sourcing the myth. And Henry 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.400 Lee chronicles this by noting that in sixteen ninety eight, 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:49.359 a Sir Hans Sloan offered a presentation to the Royal 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.960 Society of London of a very strange object, and in 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.599 his paper he provides an illustration. Rob I've attached a 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:58.440 copy of this for you to look at, but we 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.400 can read his illustration and then add anything we want. 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.279 So I'm going to read from the section of Sloan's 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:06.960 paper that Lee quotes here, but I made some abridgements 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.440 because it was kind of long. So Sloane writes, the 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:14.400 figure represents what is commonly but falsely in India called 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:19.640 the tartarian lamb. Sent down from Thence by a mister Buckley. 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.360 This was more than a foot long, as big as 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.919 one's wrist, having seven protuberances, and towards the end some 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:31.279 footstalks about three or four inches long, exactly like the foot, 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:36.279 like the footstalks of ferns, both without and within. Most 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.560 part of this was covered with a down of a 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.159 dark yellowish snuff color, some of it a quarter of 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.280 an inch long. It seemed to be shaped by art 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:49.080 to imitate a lamb, the roots or climbing parts being 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.560 made to resemble the body, and the extant footstalks the legs. 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.000 I have been assured by mister Brown, who has made 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.920 very good observations in the East Indies, that he has 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.479 been told by those who lived in China that this 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.120 down or hair is used by them for the stopping 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.040 of blood in fresh wounds, as cobwebs are with us. 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:12.880 And I'll come back to that, and that they have 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.560 it in so great a esteem that few houses are 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.000 without it. But on trials I have made of it. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.080 Though I may believe it innocent, yet I am sure 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:24.320 it is not infallible. Now, I have several things to 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.800 say about this. First of all, I suspect Sloan is 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:32.200 wrong that the Lamb of Tartary is actually a legend 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:35.560 in India or anywhere in Asia, because as far as 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:40.200 I can tell, this was a legend in Europe about Asia, 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.000 not a legend in Asia itself. Like we talked about 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.680 Engelbert Camphor in the last episode, who traveled all about Asia, 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.080 and he certainly went to Persia, but like different parts 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.280 of Russia and all over. And I think he said 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:55.680 that nobody knew what he was talking about when he 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:56.600 asked about. 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.280 This, right, Yeah, they don't know what it's about. They 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.320 don't know what I'm talking about when I bring this up. 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:06.360 It's just pure invention, and the European invention, to be clear. 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:08.480 But the other thing I would add to this, and 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:10.440 this is a sidebar, but I couldn't let it go 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.840 were cobwebs, as in spider webs, actually used by the 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.080 English to stop blood flow when somebody had a big 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.800 cut they're bleeding profusely, like, oh no, Johnny got brained 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.040 with an ax. Somebody get a bunch of spiders. 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.600 Yeah. I had not heard this before, and I feel 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:27.960 like it would have come up. I would have at 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:29.360 least seen it on Outlander, you. 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.520 Know, yeah, exactly. So I looked this up and yes, 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.440 this apparently was a remedy for bleeding in some traditional 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.640 European medicine. So the source I found on this was 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.480 a book by Kathleen Stalker called Remedies and Rituals Folk 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.200 Medicine in Norway in the New Land, published by the 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.040 Minnesota Historical Society in two thousand and seven, and this 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.960 comes in a section of the book talking about home 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.679 remedies of Scandinavian peoples, and she says that in some 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:02.240 cases they would cram parts of beehives and wasp nests 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.199 into their wounds because they believed it would help make 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:08.960 the blood clot And apparently some of them did the 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.920 same thing with spiderwebs. So here's a quote that Stalker 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.920 includes quote stopping blood with cobwebs was so common that 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:20.280 children learned to apply the remedy themselves, says Hilda Kongsburg 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:24.960 born eighteen ninety nine in Rollsoy, East, Norway. And then 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.640 this is quoting Kongsburg. When we children were playing, we 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.959 sometimes fell and got hurt. Even for deep wounds or 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:36.680 a badly pinched finger, we would find cobwebs, Kinglevev in 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:41.560 her dialect, sprinkling. Finally shaved sugar in the wound. First 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:44.800 we would stuff it with the Kingelvev and wrap a 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:49.280 rag around it. Soon it would heal. Folks, don't try 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.480 this at home. I think there may be some hygiene 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:55.320 issues here. I would recommend sticking with sterile bandages if 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.240 at all possible. The other detail also gets me. So 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:01.520 it's not just putting, like framing spider webs in your wound, 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:04.680 but also sugar shaved sugar. 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:09.000 Yeah, sugar, something sweet, and then also a little spider web, 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:10.400 a little bit of that Kinglevev. 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.000 Yeah yeah, Well, I was wondering if the reasoning is 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:16.680 you want the blood to clot and these are both 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.320 things that are sticky, sugar and spiderwebs. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:23.000 Maybe I don't know. I mean it does go to 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.079 show that. Yeah, I wouldn't see this an outlander. I 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.960 should be watching that show Vikings, and then I'm surely 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.880 somebody's gonna stop up a wound with some kinglevev. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.160 Well, as a commentary note on this sidebar, I will 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:36.800 also say this just makes me think of regression to 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.400 the mean. We have a whole episode on that concept 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.080 if you want to check it out. But as a 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:46.599 note of scientific intellectual hygiene, you can't know if a 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.160 treatment works just by giving it to somebody who's in 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:51.800 a bad state and then seeing if they get better. Eg. 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.120 If a person with a cut stops bleeding. Because people 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:56.880 often get better on their own, you have to have 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.520 a control group. You take bleeding people, split them up randomly, 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.040 some get spider webs, some get some kind of control, 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:04.800 and then you'd have to see if the people with 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.600 spider webs do better than the control group, not just 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.800 if somebody with the spider web happens to get better. 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.839 Right right. It's like if you're having some sort of 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:17.000 ailment that's bothering you and you just decide to try 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.400 some sort of a weird tea and then you end 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.840 up feeling better. Well, maybe the tea helped, But maybe 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.440 it didn't. Maybe you just happened to be drinking the 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:29.040 weird tea whilst your body was going about the It's 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:40.080 regular healing regime, right. 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.640 Anyway. Coming all back to Hans Sloan, So Sloan at 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:42.959 the end of the seventeenth century, this was the year 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.720 sixteen ninety eight. He believes he has identified the origin 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:50.360 of the Borometz legend, and it is this little quadrupedal 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.199 plant sculpture that is built out of the downy rhizome 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.320 of a Chinese species of fern. Now, over the following centuries, 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.760 a few additional specimen of this sort of Chinese plant 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:06.959 sculpture were publicized by European collectors and museums, and many 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.520 authors clearly believed this was indeed the source of the myth. 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.760 They thought they had cracked it. You'll remember in the 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:17.199 last episode, I read that passage from Erasmus Darwin's naturalistic 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:20.400 poem The Botanic Garden, where he writes about the boromets. 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.040 The lines were even round the pole, the flames of 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:28.280 love aspire and icy bosoms feel the secret fire cradled 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.439 in snow and fanned by Arctic air shines gentle boromets 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:37.720 thy golden hair. So why does Darwin specify golden hair 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.320 there when a lot of the older sources said white hair. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.520 If they said the color at all, well, Henry Lee 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.600 in his book believes this is because Darwin is buying 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:53.040 into the rhizome theory. So these lamb or dog sculptures 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:56.240 had a more golden or tan color because that's the 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.600 nature of the plant. The fibers coming off of the 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.000 fern rootstock were white, they were like golden or tan 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.760 or brown. So Lee thinks this is not the correct 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.320 explanation for the origin of the lamb legend, and I 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.400 think I agree with him, But what's his reasoning. Well, 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.640 he goes on a long discussion of the known properties 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:17.680 of the ferns used to make these sculptures. He says, 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:19.440 first of all, it is worth noting that we have 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:24.040 no evidence of these sculptures pre dating the legend. Examples 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.280 only show up long after the legend was already known. 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.080 So if there is any link at all, and we 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.360 don't know that there is. But if there is any link, 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.880 why not suppose that the legend inspired the fern root 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.840 sculptures and not the other way around. Furthermore, there are 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.920 actually only a handful of specimens of these sculptures, so 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.920 that they are a little, you know, quadrupedal animal looking things. 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.320 Somebody is clearly made out of this this fern rhizome 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:52.480 with the stems cut to look like legs of a 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.480 sheep or a dog or something. But are we sure, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.520 I mean, so we have like four or five of 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.040 these maybe in total. Are we sure they were ever 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.480 widespread enough to have given rise to this story? But 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.080 then so these are I think the more minor concerns. 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.079 Lee gets to the really serious objections to this explanation 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.600 after this. First of all, he says, these ferns do 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.880 not grow in the land that was then known as Tartari. 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.080 So Tartari again was the more northern part of the 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.120 Asian mainland at the time. These plants are from the 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.680 southern part of the Asian mainland. They're from like parts 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:29.440 of northeastern India, and they're from southern China and like 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.960 a I believe, the Malaysian Peninsula. So this would have 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.000 the legends sourcing them in the wrong place. And also 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.160 the fern in no way really matches the botanical properties 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.640 of the plant described in the stories, except that it 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:48.040 is downy, so it's said to grow from a seed 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:50.800 that is like a gourd or a melon. Ferns are 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.000 nothing like this. They don't grow from a seed like 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.000 a gord or a melon. Furthermore, some of the legends 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.160 say that these seeds were deliberately planted by the people 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.960 around Indi, hating that this plant, whatever it was, if 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.360 it existed, is used in some kind of agriculture, and 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.360 these ferns are not like that. Also, what are we 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.640 to make of the early version of the story, like 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.200 the one told by Sir John Mandeville or the person 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.200 claiming to be Sir John Mandeville saying that, Okay, you 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.160 take one of these gourds, you cut it open, and 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.680 then inside the fruit, that's where you find the lamb 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.040 that doesn't resemble this fern, you know, animal sculpture in 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:31.160 any way. And finally, the color thing. The legends describe 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:34.240 the wool of the vegetable lamb as white when they 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.160 mentioned the color at all, and the wooly fibers of 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.480 the fern rhizome are more golden or tan. 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:42.960 Yeah, I mean, you look at at actual photographs of 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:48.080 this fern and it does look it looks furry. It 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.440 looks like alf hath dyed and ferns hath sprung from 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:55.560 his body, you know. And I'll also add that this 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.880 illustration you shared with the stems coming up, this is 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:05.880 from Philosophical Transactions, black and white illustration. You know. These 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.240 these actually to me anyway, they look kind of like 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.200 lamb chops. The way that they have them angled. There's 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.320 curvature to them, and you do see that curvature in 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:18.680 images all of the actual fern, the actual willly fern. 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:22.480 But but but I only really draw this comparison when 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.760 I'm thinking about lamb and lamb meat, and I'm looking 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:27.600 at these two images. I'm not sure if I saw 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:29.720 this in the wild, I would think, whoa, this is 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.560 totally the body of a dead brown sheep. 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:34.680 Yeah, if it were, I mean, if it were the 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:36.960 lamb chops thing. Obviously, like you're saying, they would have 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.520 to be subliminal, because I think these these these footstalks 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.280 here are supposed to be the legs of the lamb, 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.320 Like the downy part the rhizome is the body and 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.480 then the stalks coming off of it are the legs. 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:50.720 But yeah, they do look like the bones poking out 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:53.920 of a rack of lamb. Yeah, after the so called 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:55.720 frenching is done to the bones. 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:59.800 Yeah, that's term. But certainly the whole thing with the 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.160 if you cut into the rhizome, you're not going to 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.040 find blood, You're not going to find bones and so forth. 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:07.040 So yeah, that doesn't hold up at all. 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.880 So anyway, Lee summarizes by saying, even if I had 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:13.879 no better explanation to offer, I should be led to 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:17.800 the conclusion that the identification of these tawny toy dogs 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.800 made in China from the root of a wild fern, 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.719 the spores of which are as small as dust, with 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.639 the vegetable lambs of Scythia that being another name for 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.439 this another name used for this region known as Tartari, 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.600 you know, the Central Asian kind of region whose white 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:38.199 fleeces were found within the ripe and opening fruit of 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:43.320 a cultivated plant raised from a large seed, was obviously erroneous, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.320 and that the origin of the rumor must be software elsewhere. 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:48.840 And you know what I'm going to say, I agree, 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.959 But Lee has another explanation, and I think he offers 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.720 some pretty compelling evidence that this is the right one. 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.600 The other explanation is that the lamb of Tartari legend 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:07.359 originates from a confused string of misinterpretations of observations of 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:08.280 the cotton plant. 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.600 That's right, because what do we have with cotton, Well, 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:17.080 we have pods ripening and opening to reveal wool essentially, 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.280 or something very similar to wool. And this lines up 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:22.639 very closely, you know, with what we see in the 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:27.720 myth as well. Lee throws this back to the writings 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:33.400 of Herotodas and Theophrastus, whose writings do seem to describe 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:38.320 something like cotton. Herotodas, writing in the fifth century BCE, 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.160 on a plant found in India, says quote and further, 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.800 there are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.520 which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:53.119 of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree wool, right. 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.080 Okay, So this is a mysterious plant to Herotodus, because 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.879 he comes from you know, he comes from a culture 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.040 in which cotton is not normally known. So he says, 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.800 you know, I've read reports that something's going on in 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.800 India where they can grow sheep's wool out of fruits 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:09.760 on trees. I don't know how they do that, but 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.320 it's really good wool. Another quote from Herodotus. This is 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.800 in chapter forty seven of the same work. He tells 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.919 a story about a corselate that was sent as a 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:24.359 gift by King Almos the second of Egypt to Sparta, 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.160 and he says that it was quote ornamented with gold 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:33.520 and fleeces from the trees, and in Lee's explanation, this 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.400 probably means it was padded with cotton that had been 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:40.720 acquired from the cotton plant fleeces from the trees. Lee 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:47.080 also cites the ancient Greek writer Tesius that's usually spelled Ctesias. 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:48.359 Quote. 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.600 Tesius also, who was the contemporary of Herodotus and was 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.120 made prisoner and kept by the king of Persia as 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.800 his court physician for seventeen years, was acquainted with the 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.000 use of a kind of wol, the produce of trees 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.840 for spinning and weaving amongst the natives of India. For 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.840 he mentions in his Indica a fragment quoted by Photius 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.520 quote tree garments, and that he thus referred to clothing 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:19.360 made from these tree fleeces. We have testimony of Vero quote. 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.560 Tizia says that there are in India trees that bear wool, 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:29.240 and also one of Alexander the Great's military commanders named Niarcus, 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:32.520 apparently spoke with wonder about trees in India that somehow 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:36.240 bore wool like sheep, which was of a surpassing whiteness. 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.760 Theophrastus, on the other hand, shares the following about the 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:45.080 island of Tylos in the Persian Gulf. Quote, wool bearing 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.479 trees which grow there abundantly have leaves like the vine, 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.920 but smaller. They bear no fruit, but the pod containing 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.800 the wool is about the size of an apple while 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:57.560 it is closed, and when it is ripe it opens. 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.360 The wool is then gathered from it and woven into 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:05.760 clothes of various qualities, some inferior but others of great value. 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.320 And Karuba says that the word Theophrastus uses for apple 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.200 melon is also used for sheep. 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:16.760 Hmmm. Oh, you can immediately see how that would perhaps 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:17.840 cause some confusion. 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:19.119 Yeah. 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.560 Now there's another thing Lee gets into where I feel 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:24.480 I need to quote from him directly for his comments 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.960 on our old friend Plenty the elder, whom he blames 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.000 for a literary blunder that introduces one of the main 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.200 components of the medieval version of the legend. So this 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.840 is Lee characterizing Plenty. He says, then comes Plenty, who, 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.960 incompetent and worthless as a naturalist, though admirable as a writer, 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.600 obscured this subject, as he did many others. In his 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.800 natural history. He mentions cotton in four different paragraphs, and 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:56.000 in every one of them inaccurate. He confuses cotton with 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.359 flax and the fabrics woven of it with linen, and 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:02.800 treats of silk as a downy substance scraped from the 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:07.600 leaves of trees. And in transcribing or translating the passage 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:12.000 from Theophrastus relating to the wool bearing trees, he distorts 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:15.560 the author's words and states that quote, these trees bear 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:19.640 gourds the size of a quince, which burst when ripe, 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.600 and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:26.600 make cloths like valuable linen. Plenty therefore seems to have 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.000 been the author of the gored portion of the story, 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:33.880 which afterwards obtained currency in Western Europe. Okay, so going 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:36.080 all the way back to John Mandevila, remember he's writing 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:41.159 about the Gowerdees, the gourds. That Lee makes a pretty 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:44.359 compelling case here that this is just a result of 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:48.320 Plenty the elder mistranslating the work of another ancient historian. 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:49.320 Wow. 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.359 So in all kinds of ancient Greek and Roman literature, 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:57.000 you have people who are not very familiar or not 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.960