Curious Creatures in Zoology

“The author of an ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia (Venice, 1705), gives an interesting description of this animal. In Part IV. c. 10, page 786, he mentions the Borametz found in Great Tartary. He repeats the description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds, that he has found, in ‘A New Work on Geography,’ namely, that ‘the Africans (sic) in Great Tartary, in the province of Sambulala, are enriched by means of seeds, like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size, which grow and blossom like a stem to the navel of an animal which is called Borametz in their language, i.e. lamb, on account of its resembling a lamb in all its limbs, from head to foot; its hoofs are cloven, its skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing, but it has no horns, only the hairs of its head, which grow, and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half a cubit and more. According to those who speak of this wondrous thing, its taste is like the flesh of fish, its blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as long as there is herbage within reach of the stem, from which it derives its life. If the herbage is destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, which seeks to destroy it.’ The author concludes by expressing his belief that this account of the animal having the shape of a lamb is more likely to be true than it is of human form.”

As I have said, there are several delineations of this Borametz or Borometz, but there is one, a frontispiece to the 1656 edition of the Paridisi in Sole – Paradisus Terrestris, of John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, in which, together with Adam and Eve, the lamb-tree is shown as flourishing in the Garden of Eden; and Du Bartas, in “His divine Weekes And Workes” in his poem of Eden, (the first day of the second week), makes Adam to take a tour of Eden, and describes his wonder at what he sees, especially at the “lamb-plant.”

“Musing, anon through crooked Walks he wanders,Round-winding rings, and intricate Meanders,Fals-guiding paths, doubtfull beguiling strays,And right-wrong errors of an end-less Maze:Not simply hedged with a single borderOf Rosemary, cut-out with curious order,In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-Horses,And thousand other counterfaited corses;But with true Beasts, fast in the ground still sticking,Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking:Such as those Bonarets, in Scythia bredOf slender seeds, and with green fodder fed;Although their bodies, noses, mouthes and eys,Of new-yean’d Lambs have full the form and guise;And should be very Lambs, save that (for foot)Within the ground they fix a living root,Which at their navell growes, and dies that dayThat they have brouz’d the neighbour grass away.O wondrous vertue of God onely good!The Beast hath root, the Plant hath flesh and bloodThe nimble Plant can turn it to and fro;The nummed Beast can neither stir nor go:The Plant is leaf-less, branch-less, void of fruit;The Beast is lust-less, sex-less, fire-less, mute;The Plant with Plants his hungry panch doth feed;Th’ admired Beast is sowen a slender seed.”

Of the other kind of “lamb-tree,” that which bears lambs in pods, we have an account, in Sir John Maundeville’s Travels. “Whoso goeth from Cathay to Inde, the high and the low, he shal go through a Kingdom that men call Cadissen, and it is a great lande, there groweth a manner of fruite as it were gourdes, and when it is ripe men cut it a sonder, and men fynde therein a beast as it were of fleshe and bone and bloud, as it were a lyttle lambe without wolle, and men eate the beaste and fruite also, and sure it seemeth very strange.”

And in the “Journall of Frier Odoricus,” which I have incorporated in my edition of “The Voiage and Travayle of Syr John Maundeville, Knight,” he says: “I was informed also by certaine credible persons of another miraculous thing, namely, that in a certaine Kingdome of the sayd Can, wherein stand the mountains called Kapsei (the Kingdomes name is Kalor) there groweth great Gourds or Pompions, (pumpkins) which being ripe, doe open at the tops, and within them is found a little beast like unto a yong lambe.”

The Chimæra

Aldrovandus gives us the accompanying illustration of a Chimæra, a fabulous Classical monster, said to possess three heads, those of a lion, a goat, and a dragon. It used so to be pictorially treated, but in more modern times as Aldrovandus represents. The mountain Chimæra, now called Yanar, is in ancient Lycia, in Asia Minor, and was a burning mountain, which, according to Spratt, is caused by a stream of inflammable gas, issuing from a crevice. This monster is easily explained, if we can believe Servius, the Commentator of Virgil, who says that flames issue from the top of the mountain, and that there are lions in the vicinity; the middle part abounds in goats, and the lower part with serpents.

The Harpy and Siren

The conjunction of the human form with birds is very easy, wings being fitted to it, as in the case of angels – and as applied to beasts, this treatment is very ancient, vide the winged bulls of Assyria, and the classical Pegasus, or winged horse. With birds, the best form in which it is treated in Mythology is the Harpy. This is taken from Aldrovandus, and fully illustrates the mixture of bird and woman, described by Shakespeare in Pericles (iv. 3): —

“Cleon.Thou’rt like the harpy,Which to betray, dost, with thine angel’s face,Seize with thine eagle’s talons.”

Then, also, we have the Siren, shown by this illustration, taken from Pompeii. These Sea Nymphs were like the Harpies, depicted as a compound of bird and woman. Like them also, there were three of them; but, unlike them, they had such lovely voices, and were so beautiful, that they lured seamen to their destruction, they having no power to combat the allurements of the Sirens; whilst the Harpies emitted an infectious smell, and spoiled whatever they touched, with their filth, and excrements.

Licetus, writing in 1634, and Zahn, in 1696, give the accompanying picture of a monster born at Ravenna in 1511 or 1512. It had a horn on the top of its head, two wings, was without arms, and only one leg like that of a bird of prey. It had an eye in its knee, and was of both sexes. It had the face and body of a man, except in the lower part, which was covered with feathers.

Marcellus Palonius Romanus made some Latin verses upon this prodigy, which may be thus rendered into English: —

A Monster strange in fable, and deformStill more in fact; sailing with swiftest wing,He threatens double slaughter, and convertsTo thy fell ruin, flames of living fire.Of double sex, it spares no sex, alikeWith kindred blood it fills th’ Æmathian plain;Its corpses strew alike both street and sea.There hoary Thetis and the NereidsSwim shudd’ring through the waves, while floating wideThe fish replete on human bodies – . Such,Ravenna, was the Monster which foretoldThy fall, which brings thee now such bitter woe,Tho’ boasting in thy image triumph-crowned.

The Barnacle Goose

Of all extraordinary beliefs, that in the Barnacle Goose, which obtained credence from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, is as wonderful as any. The then accepted fact that the Barnacle Goose was generated on trees, and dropped alive in the water, dates back a hundred years before Gerald de Barri. Otherwise Giraldus Cambrensis wrote in 1187, about these birds, the following being a translation: —

“There are here many birds which are called Bernacæ, which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature, and very wonderful. They are like marsh-geese, but smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks, as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood, and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more freely. Having thus, in course of time, been clothed with a strong covering of feathers, they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells, and already formed. The eggs are not impregnated in coitu, like those of other birds, nor does the bird sit upon its eggs to hatch them, and in no corner of the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds, on fast days, without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. For, if any one were to eat of the leg of our first parent, although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating flesh.”

We see here, that Giraldus speaks of these barnacles being developed on wreckage in the sea, but does not mention their growing upon trees, which was the commoner belief. I have quoted both Sir John Maundeville, and Odoricus, about the lamb-tree, which neither seem to consider very wonderful, for Sir John says: “Neverthelesse I sayd to them that I held yt for no marvayle, for I sayd that in my countrey are trees yt beare fruit, yt become byrds flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and that that falleth on earth, dyeth, and they marvailed much thereat.” And the Friar, in continuation of his story of the Borometz, says: “Even as I my selfe have heard reported that there stand certaine trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea, bearing fruit like unto a gourd, which at a certaine time of the yeere doe fall into the water, and become birds called Bernacles, and this is most true.”

Olaus Magnus, in speaking of the breeding of Ducks in Scotland, says: “Moreover, another Scotch Historian, who diligently sets down the secret of things, saith that in the Orcades, (the Orkneys) Ducks breed of a certain Fruit falling in the Sea; and these shortly after, get wings, and fly to the tame or wild ducks.” And, whilst discoursing on Geese, he affirms that “some breed from Trees, as I said of Scotland Ducks in the former Chapter.” Sebastian Müenster, from whom I have taken the preceding illustration, says in his Cosmographia Universalis:– “In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit, conglomerated of their leaves; and this fruit, when, in due time, it falls into the water beneath it, is endowed with new life, and is converted into a living bird, which they call the ‘tree goose.’ This tree grows in the Island of Pomonia, which is not far from Scotland, towards the North. Several old Cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention the tree, and it must not be regarded as fictitious, as some new writers suppose.”

In Camden’s “Britannia” (translated by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London) he says, speaking of Buchan: – “It is hardly worth while to mention the clayks, a sort of geese; which are believed by some, (with great admiration) to grow upon the trees on this coast and in other places, and, when they are ripe, to fall down into the sea; because neither their nests nor eggs can anywhere be found. But they who saw the ship, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, when it was laid up in the river Thames, could testify, that little birds breed in the old rotten keels of ships; since a great number of such, without life and feathers, stuck close to the outside of the keel of that ship; yet I should think, that the generation of these birds was not from the logs of wood, but from the sea, termed by the poets ‘the parent of all things.’”

In “Purchas, his Pilgrimage,” is the voyage of Gerat de Veer to China, &c., in 1569 – and he speaks of the Barnacle goose thus: – “Those geese were of a perfit red colour, such as come to Holland about Weiringen, and every yeere are there taken in abundance, but till this time, it was never knowne where they hatcht their egges, so that some men have taken upon them to write that they sit upon trees in Scotland, that hang over the water, and such eggs that fall from them downe into the water, become young geese, and swim there out of the water: but those that fall upon the land, burst asunder, and are lost; but that is now found to be contrary, that no man could tell where they breed their egges, for that no man that ever wee knew, had ever beene under 80°; nor that land under 80° was never set downe in any card, much lesse the red geese that breede therein.” He and his sailors declared that they had seen these birds sitting on their eggs, and hatching them, on the coasts of Nova Zembla.

Du Bartas thus mentions this goose: —

“So, slowe Boötes underneath him sees,In th’ ycie iles, those goslings hatcht of trees;Whose fruitfull leaves, falling into the water,Are turned, (they say) to living fowls soon after.So, rotten sides of broken ships do changeTo barnacles; O transformation strange!’Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull,Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull.”

I could multiply quotations on this subject. Gesner and every other naturalist believed in the curious birth of the Barnacle goose – and so even did Aldrovandus, writing at the close of the seventeenth century, for from him I take this illustration. But enough has been said upon the subject.

Remarkable Egg

No wonder that a credulous age, which could see nothing extraordinary in the Barnacle goose, could also, metaphorically, swallow such an egg, as Licetus, first of all, and Aldrovandus, after him, gives us in the accompanying true picture. The latter says that a goose’s egg was found in France, (he leaves a liberal margin for locality,) which on being broken appeared exactly as in the picture. Comment thereon is useless.

Moon Woman

One would have imagined that this Egg would be sufficient to test the credulity of most people, but Aldrovandus was equal to the occasion, and he gives us a “Moon Woman,” who lays eggs, sits upon them, and hatches Giants; and he gives this on the authority of Lycosthenes and Ravisius Textor.

The Griffin

There always has been a tradition of birds being existent, of far greater size than those usually visible.

The Maoris aver that at times they still hear the gigantic Moa in the scrub – and, even, if extinct, we know, by the state of the bones found, that its extinction must have been of comparatively recent date. But no one credits the Moa with the power of flight, whilst the Griffin, which must not be confounded with the gold-loving Arimaspian Gryphon, was a noble bird. Mandeville knew him: – “In this land (Bactria) are many gryffons, more than in other places, and some say they have the body before as an Egle, and behinde as a Lyon, and it is trouth, for they be made so; but the Griffen hath a body greater than viii Lyons, and stall worthier (stouter, braver) than a hundred Egles. For certainly he wyl beare to his nest flying, a horse and a man upon his back, or two Oxen yoked togither as they go at plowgh, for he hath longe nayles on hys fete, as great as it were hornes of Oxen, and of those they make Cups there to drynke of, and of his rybes they make bowes to shoote with.”

Olaus Magnus says they live in the far Northern mountains, that they prey upon horses and men, and that of their nails drinking-cups were made, as large as ostrich eggs. These enormous birds correspond in many points to the Eastern Ruc or Rukh, or the Rok of the “Arabian Nights,” of whose mighty powers of flight Sindbad took advantage.

Ser Marco Polo, speaking of Madagascar, says: – “’Tis said that in those other Islands to the south, which the ships are unable to visit because this strong current prevents their return, is found the bird Gryphon, which appears there at certain seasons. The description given of it is, however, entirely different from what our stories and pictures make it. For persons who had been there and had seen it, told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact, that its wings covered an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 12 paces long, and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an Elephant in its talons, and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces: having so killed him, the bird gryphon swoops down on him, and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call the bird Ruc, and it has no other name. So I wot not if this be the real gryphon, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this I can tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird, as our stories do relate; but, enormous as they be, they are fashioned just like an eagle.

“The Great Kaan sent to those parts to enquire about these curious matters, and the story was told by those who went thither. He also sent to procure the release of an envoy of his who had been despatched thither, and had been detained; so both those envoys had many wonderful things to tell the Great Kaan about those strange islands, and about the birds I have mentioned. They brought (as I heard) to the Great Kaan, a feather of the said Ruc, which was stated to measure 90 Spans, whilst the quill part was two palms in circumference, a marvellous object! The Great Kaan was delighted with it, and gave great presents to those who brought it.”

This quill seems rather large; other travellers, however, perhaps not so truthful as Ser Marco, speak of these enormous quills. The Moa of New Zealand (Dinornis giganteus) is supposed to have been the largest bird in Creation – and next to that is the Æpyornis maximus—whose bones and egg have been found in Madagascar. An egg is in the British Museum, and it has a liquid capacity of 2.35 gallons, but, alas, for the quill story – this bird was wingless.

The Condor has been put forward as the real and veritable Ruc, but no living specimens will compare with this bird as it has been described – especially if we take the picture of it in Lane’s “Arabian Nights,” where it is represented as taking up three elephants, one in its beak, and one in each of its claws.

The Japanese have a legend of a great bird which carried off men – and there is a very graphic picture now on view at the White Wing of the British Museum, where one of these birds, having seized a man, frightens, very naturally, the whole community.

The Phœnix

Pliny says of the Phœnix: – “Æthiopia and India, more especially produce birds of diversified plumage, and such as quite surpass all description. In the front rank of these is the Phœnix, that famous bird of Arabia; though I am not sure that its existence is not a fable.

“It is said that there is only one in existence in the whole world, and that that one has not been seen very often. We are told that this bird is of the size of an eagle, and has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, whilst the rest of the body is a purple colour; except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled, of a roseate hue; the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. The first Roman who described this bird, and who has done so with great exactness, was the Senator Manilius, so famous for his learning; which he owed, too, to the instructions of no teacher. He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the Sun; that it lives five hundred and forty years. That when it is old it builds a nest of Cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die: that from its bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which, in time, changes into a little bird; that the first thing it does is to perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire to the City of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the altar of that divinity.

“The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the great year is completed with the life of this bird, and that then a new cycle comes round again with the same characteristics as the former one, in the seasons and the appearance of the stars; and he says that this begins about midday of the day in which the Sun enters the sign of Aries. He also tells us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the consulship of P. Licinius, and Cneius Cornelius, (B.C. 96) it was the two hundred and fifteenth year of the said revolution. Cornelius Valerianus says that the Phœnix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt in the Consulship of Q. Plautius and Sextus Papinius, (A.D. 36). This bird was brought to Rome in the Censorship of the Emperor Claudius, being the year from the building of the City, 800, (A.D. 47) and it was exposed to public view in the Comitium. This fact is attested by the public Annals, but there is no one that doubts that it was a fictitious Phœnix.”

Cuvier seems to think that the bird described above was a Golden Pheasant, brought from the interior of Asia – at a time when these birds were unknown to civilised Europe.

Du Bartas, in his metrical account of the Creation, mentions this winged prodigy: —

“The Heav’nly Phœnix first began to frameThe earthly Phœnix, and adorn’d the sameWith such a Plume, that Phœbus, circuitingFrom Fez to Cairo, sees no fairer thing:Such form, such feathers, and such Fate he gave herThat fruitfull Nature breedeth nothing braver:Two sparkling eyes; upon her crown, a crestOf starrie Sprigs (more splendent than the rest)A goulden doun about her dainty neck,Her brest deep purple, and a scarlet back,Her wings and train of feathers (mixed fine)Of orient azure and incarnadine.He did appoint her Fate to be her Pheer,And Death’s cold kisses to restore her heerHer life again, which never shall expireUntill (as she) the World consume in fire.For, having passed under divers Climes,A thousand Winters, and a thousand Primes;Worn out with yeers, wishing her endless end,To shining flames she doth her life commend,Dies to revive, and goes into her GraveTo rise againe more beautifull and brave.With Incense, Cassia, Spiknard, Myrrh, and Balm,By break of Day shee builds (in narrow room)Her Urn, her Nest, her Cradle, and her Toomb;Where, while she sits all gladly-sad expectingSome flame (against her fragrant heap reflecting)To burn her sacred bones to seedfull cinders,(Wherein, her age, but not her life, she renders.)········And Sol himself, glancing his goulden eyesOn th’ odoriferous Couch wherein she lies,Kindles the spice, and by degrees consumesTh’ immortall Phœnix, both her flesh and plumes.But instantly, out of her ashes springsA Worm, an Egg then, then a Bird with wings,Just like the first, (rather the same indeed)Which (re-ingendred of its selfly seed)By nobly dying, a new Date begins,And where she loseth, there her life she wins:Endless by’r End, eternall by her Toomb;While, by a prosperous Death, she doth becom(Among the cinders of her sacred Fire)Her own selfs Heir, Nurse, Nurseling, Dam and Sire.”

The Swallow

“And is the swallow gone?Who beheld it?Which way sailed it?Farewell bade it none?”(W. Smith, Country book.)

Olaus Magnus answered this question, according to his lights, and when, discoursing on the Migration of Swallows he says: – “Though many Writers of Natural Histories have written that Swallows change their stations; that is, when cold Winter begins to come, they fly to hotter Climats; yet oft-times, in the Northern Countries, Swallows are drawn forth, by chance by Fishermen, like a lump cleaving together, where they went amongst the Reeds, after the beginning of Autumn, and there fasten themselves bill to bill, wing to wing, feet to feet. For it is observed, that they, about that time ending their most sweet note, (?) do so descend, and they fly out peaceably after the beginning of the Spring, and come to their old Nests, or else they build new ones by their natural care. Now that lump being drawn forth by ignorant young men (for the old Fishermen that are acquainted with it, put it in again) is carryed and laid on the Sea Shore, and by the heat of the Sun, the Lump is dissolved, and the Swallows begin to fly, but they last but a short time because they were not set at liberty by being taken so soon, but they were made captive by it. It hapneth also in the Spring, when they return freely, and come to their old Nests, or make new ones, if a very cold Winter come upon them, and much snow fall, they will all dye; that all that Summer you shall see none of them upon the Houses, or Banks, or Rivers; but a very few that came later out of the Waters, or from other Parts, which by Nature come flying thither, to repair their Issue. Winter being fully ended in May; For Husband-Men, from their Nests, built higher or lower, take their Prognostications, whether they shall sowe in Valleys, or Mountains or Hills, according as the Rain shall increase or diminish. Also the Inhabitants hold it an ill sign, if the Swallows refuse to build upon their houses; for they fear those House-tops are ready to fall.”