Barometz

Much wonder is made of the Boramez, that ſtrange plant-animall or vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which Wolves delight to feed on, which hath the ſhape of a Lamb, affordeth a bloudy juice upon breaking, and liveth while the plants be conſumed about it; and yet if all this be no more then the ſhape of a Lamb in the flower or ſeed, upon the top of the ſtalk, as we meet with the formes of Bees, Flies and Dogs in ſome others, he hath ſeen nothing that ſhall much wonder at it.

Cradled in ſnow and fann'd by arctic air / Shines, gentle Barometz! thy golden hair; / Rooted in earth each cloven hood deſcends, / And round and round her flexile neck ſhe bends; / Crops the grey coral moſs, and hoary thyme, / Or laps with roſy tongue the melting rime; [...]

[...] I say to you what I should say if any little Barometzes should come under my care. It is more on the imaginary side than the matter of fact.

It seemed to be at least as good a vegetable lamb as Lepas was an unripe vegetable bird, and one version of the story itself is probably explained by it. That is the version in which the barometz grows out of the ground, being attached to its root system by its umbilical cord and capable of feeding only as far as that cord will reach—a perfect counterpart to the Jidra of the Talmud.

One has only to consult [Jorge Luis] Borges's own "Book of Imaginary Beings" to encounter chimeras, phoenixes, basilisks, barometzes (the last a kind of vegetable lamb) and the like.

However, one night when I was hard at work in one of the powder mills outside the fortress, I was captured along with some others by a band of Tartars and carried off so deep into their territory that I not only saw borametz, the legendary sheep-shaped melon, growing, I ate it.

A singular vegetable production met with in the deserts, concerning which various fables have been related, is a kind of fern called the barometz, or Scythian lamb; the latter name being given to it from its woolly body, attached to the ground by a long slender stalk, affording a distant resemblance to a lamb grazing.

[page 7] The Tartarian, or Scythian lamb, or borametz, is a plant, of which many miraculous tales are told. Travellers say that it exactly resembles a lamb, and that its pulp is similar to the flesh of lamb; and that it contains blood, &c.; but these accounts require confirmation. [...] [page 8, footnote †] [The plants] appear to be originally the roots or stalks of certain vegetables, probably of the capillary kind, covered with a woolly moss, which, naturally naturally bearing resemblance to the figure of a lamb, have been helped out and brought nearer to it by art, and the addition of new parts. Sir Hans Sloane, and Breynius [Jacob Breyne], give us the figures and descriptions of such borametzes in their collections.