Herodotus, as Henry Lee read him5th century BC
Certain trees bear for their fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence, and the natives clothe themselves in cloths made therefrom
Nothing yet. On Henry Lee's reading, this is simply cotton.
Odoric of Pordenonereturned 1330
Told by persons worthy of credit
of gourds that contain a little beast like unto a young lamb
.
The fleece becomes a beast, and the beast is inside the fruit. The source is now people he talked to.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville1357–1371
men find within a little beast, in flesh, in bone, and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool
. And: Of that fruit I have eaten
.
Flesh, bone and blood, and an eyewitness who has eaten it. The wool, the one true part, is gone.
Julius Caesar Scaliger1557
whilst the plant is surrounded with herbage it lives as does a lamb, but as soon as it has consumed all within its reach it withers and dies
. Then, doubting: I would like to know from you how four distinct legs and their feet can be produced from one stem
.
It grazes, on a tether, and it can die. A sceptic adds the most vivid details while saying he does not believe them.
Claude Duret1605
A creature singularly admirable and almost incredible
, described from a very ancient Hebrew book
rather than from anything he saw. Its bones give the gift of prophecy.
Authority replaces observation: the older the book, the stronger the lamb.
Samuel Collins, from Moscow, to Robert Boyle17th century
Fables, which have not the least shadow of truth.
Someone near the supposed source says no.
Hans Sloane, at the Royal Society1698
A specimen in hand: It seem’d to be shap’d by Art to imitate a Lamb, the Roots or climbing part is made to resemble the Body, and the extant Foot-stalks the Legs.
Someone looks at the object itself. It is a fern root, carved.
Henry Lee1887
The first rumour concerning cotton
, he wrote, was that wool as white and soft as that of a lamb grew on trees
, which was exaggerated to a statement that ‘lambs grew on certain trees’
.
The whole stalk, traced back to its seed.
The lamb never quite died. In 1753 Linnaeus gave its name to the woolly fern the fake specimens were carved from, and the fern is still called Cibotium barometz. A myth, pruned to its true part, kept as a name.