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94-640: Underlying the legend is the cotton plant , which was unknown in Northern Europe before the Norman conquest of Sicily . Thomas Browne 's Pseudodoxia Epidemica named it as the Boramez . In Ephraim Chambers ' Cyclopædia , Agnus scythicus was described as a kind of zoophyte , said to grow in Tartary , resembling the figure and structure of a lamb. It was also called Agnus Vegetabilis , Agnus Tartaricus and bore

188-571: A Saracen friend with some fine jewels which had passed into d'Outremeuse's own possession: of this Lapidaire, a French version, which seems to have been completed after 1479, has been several times printed. A manuscript of Mandeville's travels offered for sale in 1862 is said to have been divided into five books: while the cataloguer supposed Mandeville to have been the author of a concluding piece entitled La Venianche de nostre Signeur Jhesu-Crist fayle par Vespasian fit del empereur de Romme et commeet lozeph daramathye fu deliures de la prizon . From

282-404: A capsule called a "boll", each seed surrounded by fibres of two types. These fibres are the more commercially interesting part of the plant and they are separated from the seed by a process called ginning . At the first ginning, the longer fibres, called staples, are removed and these are twisted together to form yarn for making thread and weaving into high quality textiles. At the second ginning,

376-619: A London auction in June 2011. Mandeville's work was translated into Early Modern Irish around 1475. There are certain other works bearing the name of Mandeville or de Bourgogne. MS. Add. C. 280 in the Bodleian appends to the Travels a short French life of St Alban of Germany, the author of which calls himself Johan Mandivill[e], knight, formerly of the town of St Alban, and says he writes to correct an impression prevalent among his countrymen that there

470-692: A certain Johan de Bourgoyne, who was pardoned by parliament on 20 August 1321 for having taken part in the attack on the Despensers ( Hugh the Younger and Hugh the Elder ), but whose pardon was revoked in May 1322, the year in which "Mandeville" professes to have left England. Among the persons similarly pardoned on the recommendation of the same nobleman was a Johan Mangevilayn, whose name appears related to that of "de Mandeville", which

564-556: A chance remark of the latter caused the renewal of their old Cairo acquaintance, and that Ad Barbam, after showing his medical skill on Mandeville, urgently begged him to write his travels; "and so at length, by his advice and help, monitu et adiutorio , was composed this treatise, of which I had certainly proposed to write nothing until at least I had reached my own parts in England". He goes on to speak of himself as being now lodged in Liège, "which

658-533: A derivative place-name, meaning the Magneville or Mandeville district. The name "de Mandeville" might be suggested to de Bourgogne by that of his fellow culprit Mangevilayn, and it is even possible that the two fled to England together, were in Egypt together, met again at Liège, and shared in the compilation of the Travels . Whether after the appearance of the Travels either de Bourgogne or "Mangevilayn" visited England

752-596: A group of five species from America and Pacific islands are tetraploid, apparently due to a single hybridization event around 1.5 to 2 million years ago. The tetraploid species are G. hirsutum , G. tomentosum , G. mustelinum , G. barbadense , and G. darwinii . Cultivated cottons are perennial shrubs, most often grown as annuals. Plants are 1–2 m high in modern cropping systems, sometimes higher in traditional, multiannual cropping systems, now largely disappearing. The leaves are broad and lobed, with three to five (or rarely seven) lobes. The seeds are contained in

846-453: A hostel called "al hoste Henkin Levo": this manuscript gave the physician's name as "Johains de Bourgogne dit ale barbe", which doubtless conveys its local form. There is no contemporary English mention of any English knight named Jehan de Mandeville, nor are the arms said to have been on the Liège tomb like any known Mandeville arms. However, George F. Warner has suggested that de Bourgogne may be

940-417: A melon or gourd-like seed, perfectly formed as if born naturally. As time passed, this idea was replaced with the notion that the creature was indeed both a living animal and a living plant. Schlegel, in his work on the various legends of the vegetable lamb, recounts the lamb being born without its horns, but with two puffs of white, curly hair instead. The 14th century book The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

1034-605: A modernized extract quoted by the Liège herald, Louis Abry (1643–1720), from the lost fourth book of the Myreur des Hystors of Johans des Preis , styled d'Oultremouse. In this, "Jean de Bourgogne, dit a la Barbe" is said to have revealed himself on his deathbed to d'Oultremouse, whom he made his executor, and to have described himself in his will as "messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seigneur de l'isle de Campdi et du château Pérouse (Lord Jean de Mandeville, knight, Count de Montfort in England and lord of

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1128-524: A number of cases the writer has failed to understand those passages which he adopts from Odoric and professes to give as his own experiences. Thus, where Odoric has given a most curious and veracious account of the Chinese custom of employing tame cormorants to catch fish , the cormorants are converted by Mandeville into "little beasts called loyres which are taught to go into the water" (the word loyre being apparently used here for " otter ", lutra , for which

1222-481: A separate kingdom some seventy years before. The most notable of these false statements occurs in his adoption from Odoric of the story of the Valley Perilous . This is, in its original form, apparently founded on real experiences of Odoric viewed through a haze of excitement and superstition. Mandeville, while swelling the wonders of the tale with a variety of extravagant touches, appears to safeguard himself from

1316-587: A similar plant-animal in Jewish folklore as early as AD 436. This creature, called the Yeduah ( ידוע ‎, ידעוני ‎, or אַדְנֵי הַשָׂדֵה ‎), was like a lamb in form and sprouted from the earth connected to a stem. Those who went hunting the Yeduah could only harvest the creature by severing it from its stem with arrows or darts. Once the animal was severed, it died and its bones could be used in divination and prophetic ceremonies. An alternative version of

1410-462: A soft substance. Cotton is the primary natural fibre used by humans today, amounting to about 80% of world natural fibre production. Where cotton is cultivated, it is a major oilseed crop and a main protein source for animal feed. Cotton is thus of great importance for agriculture, industry and trade, especially for tropical and subtropical countries in Africa, South America and Asia. Consequently,

1504-491: A statute must in mortgage be, Till a Redeemer come to set it free. Even in those parts of the book which might be supposed to represent some genuine experience, there are the plainest traces that another work has been made use of. This is the itinerary of the German knight Wilhelm von Boldensele , written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Hélie de Talleyrand-Périgord . A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt that

1598-471: A treatise on the plague , extant in Latin, French and English texts, and in Latin and English abridgments. Herein he describes himself as Johannes de Burgundia, otherwise called cum Barba, citizen of Liège and professor of the art of medicine; says that he had practised forty years and had been in Liège in the plague of 1365; and adds that he had previously written a treatise on the cause of the plague, according to

1692-522: Is a genus of flowering plants in the tribe Gossypieae of the mallow family, Malvaceae , from which cotton is harvested. It is native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Old and New Worlds . There are about 50 Gossypium species, making it the largest genus in the tribe Gossypieae, and new species continue to be discovered. The name of the genus is derived from the Arabic word goz , which refers to

1786-504: Is a book written between 1357 and 1371 that purports to be the travel memoir of an Englishman named Sir John Mandeville across the Islamic world as far as India and China. The earliest-surviving text is in French, followed by translations into many other languages; the work acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it

1880-511: Is a later form of "de Magneville". The name Mangevilain occurs in Yorkshire as early as the 16th year of the reign of Henry I of England , but is very rare, and (failing evidence of any place named Mangeville) seems to be merely a variant spelling of Magnevillain. The meaning may be simply "of Magneville ", de Magneville; but the family of a 14th-century bishop of Nevers were called both "Mandevilain" and "de Mandevilain", where Mandevilain seems

1974-599: Is credited with bringing the legend to public attention in Europe. It describes a strange gourd-like fruit grown in Tartary. Once ripe, the fruit was cut open, revealing what looked like a lamb in flesh and blood but lacking wool. The fruit and the lamb could then be eaten. Friar Odoric of Friuli , much like Mandeville, travelled extensively and claimed to have heard of gourds in Persia that, when ripe, opened to contain lamb-like beasts. In

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2068-561: Is not recorded whether the treatise contains the author's name, and, if so, what name. Tanner ( Bibliotheca ) alleges that Mandeville wrote several books on medicine, and among the Ashmolean manuscripts in the Bodleian Library are a medical receipt by John de Magna Villa (No. 2479), an aichemical receipt by him (No. 1407), and another alchemical receipt by Johannes de Villa Magna (No. 1441). Finally, de Bourgogne wrote under his own name

2162-640: Is now extant only in free abbreviations, contained in two 15th-century manuscripts in the Bodleian Library —manuscript e Museo 116 , and manuscript Rawlinson D.99 : the former, which is the better, is in East Midlands English , and may possibly have belonged to the Augustinian priory of St Osyth in Essex , while the latter is in Southern Middle English. The first English translation direct from

2256-749: Is only fair to recognize that the description (though the suggestion of the greatest part exists in Odoric) displays a good deal of imaginative power; and there is much in the account of Christian's passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death , in John Bunyan 's famous allegory, which indicates a possibility that Bunyan may have read and remembered this episode either in Mandeville or in Hakluyt 's Odoric . It does not follow that

2350-403: Is only two days distant from the sea of England"; and it is stated in the colophon (and in the manuscripts) that the book was first published in French by Mandeville, its author, in 1355, at Liège, and soon after in the same city translated into "said" Latin form. Moreover, a manuscript of the French text extant at Liège about 1860 contained a similar statement, and added that the author lodged at

2444-477: Is out of necessity; if one were to sequence the tetraploid genome without model diploid genomes, the euchromatic DNA sequences of the AD genomes would co-assemble and the repetitive elements of AD genomes would assemble independently into A and D sequences, respectively. Then there would be no way to untangle the mess of AD sequences without comparing them to their diploid counterparts. The public sector effort continues with

2538-730: Is taken from the La Flor des Estoires d'Orient of Hetoum , an Armenian of princely family, who became a monk of the Praemonstrant or Premonstratensian order, and in 1307 dictated this work on the East, in the French tongue at Poitiers , out of his own extraordinary acquaintance with Asia and its history in his own time. A story of the fortress at Corycus, or the Castle Sparrowhawk, appears in Mandeville's Book. No passage in Mandeville can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo , with one exception. This

2632-519: Is the common Arabic word for pepper; the others have not been satisfactorily explained). But these, and the particulars of his narrative for which no literary sources have yet been found, are too few to constitute a proof of personal experience. Mandeville, again, in some passages shows a correct idea of the form of the earth , and of position in latitude ascertained by observation of the pole star; he knows that there are antipodes , and that if ships were sent on voyages of discovery they might sail round

2726-522: Is very doubtful. St Albans Abbey had a sapphire ring, and Canterbury a crystal orb, said to have been given by Mandeville; but these might have been sent from Liège, and it will appear later that the Liège physician possessed and wrote about precious stones. St Albans also had a legend, recorded in John Norden 's Speculum Britanniae (1596) that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville (represented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield) once stood in

2820-457: Is where he states that at Hormuz the people during the great heat lie in water—a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. It is most likely that this fact had been interpolated in the copy of Odoric used by Mandeville, for if he had borrowed it directly from Polo he could have borrowed more. A good deal about the manners and customs of the Tatars is demonstrably derived from the work of

2914-474: The Provençal is luria or loiria ). At a very early date the coincidence of Mandeville's stories with those of Odoric was recognized, insomuch that a manuscript of Odoric which is or was in the chapter library at Mainz begins with the words: " Incipit Itinerarius fidelis fratris Odorici socii Militis Mendavil per Indian; licet hic ille prius et alter posterius peregrinationem suam descripsit ". ("Here begins

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3008-758: The Renaissance , the Lamb of Tartary was a frequent object of philosophical and botanical debate. It became an important heuristic to discuss the natural order of things and the Aristotelian scale of beings. The mid-16th century, Sigismund von Herberstein , who in 1517 and 1526 was the ambassador to the Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V, presented a much more detailed account of the Barometz in his "Notes on Russia." He claimed to have heard from too many credible sources to doubt

3102-509: The phoenix and the weeping crocodile , such as Pliny has collected, are introduced here and there, derived no doubt from him, Solinus , the bestiaries, or the Speculum naturale of Vincent de Beauvais. And interspersed, especially in the chapters about the Levant , are the stories and legends that were retailed to every pilgrim, such as the legend of Seth and the grains of paradise from which grew

3196-517: The East, at least in the sections focused on the Holy Land, Egypt, the Levant and the means of getting there. The prologue points almost exclusively to the Holy Land as the subject of the work. The mention of more distant regions comes in only towards the end of this prologue and (in a manner) as an afterthought. However, this is commensurate with Mandeville's emphasis on 'curiositas'—wandering—rather than Christian 'scientia' (knowledge). The sources of

3290-576: The Franciscan Giovanni da Pian del Carpine , who went as the pope's ambassador to the Tatars in 1245–1247; but Dr. Warner considers that the immediate source for Mandeville was the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais . Though the passages in question are all to be found in Carpine more or less exactly, the expression is condensed and the order changed. For examples compare Mandeville, p. 250, on

3384-471: The French has been already quoted, but four others, unprinted, have been discovered by Johann Vogels. They exist in eight manuscripts, of which seven are in Great Britain, while the eighth was copied by a monk of Abingdon ; probably, therefore, all these unprinted translations were executed in Great Britain. From one of them, according to Vogels, an English version was made which has never been printed and

3478-418: The French was made (at least as early as the beginning of the 15th century) from a manuscript of which many pages were lost. Writing of the name 'Califfes', the author says that it is taut a dire come rol (s). II y soleit auoir V. soudans "as much as to say king. There used to be 5 sultans". In the defective French manuscript a page ended with Il y so ; then came a gap, and the next page went on with part of

3572-469: The Guillemins was a tombstone of Mandeville, with a Latin inscription stating that he was otherwise named "ad Barbam", was a professor of medicine, and died at Liège on 17 November 1372: this inscription is quoted as far back as 1462. Even before his death, the Liège physician seems to have confessed to a share in the circulation of, and additions to, the work. In the common Latin abridged version of it, at

3666-464: The Isle of Campdi and the castle Pérouse)". It is added that, having had the misfortune to kill an unnamed count in his own country, he engaged himself to travel through the three parts of the world, arrived at Liège in 1343, was a great naturalist, profound philosopher and astrologer , and had a remarkable knowledge of physics. The identification is confirmed by the fact that in the now destroyed church of

3760-633: The Roxburghe Club, while the Cotton text, first printed in 1725–27, is in modern reprints the current English version. That none of the forms of the English version can be from the same hand which wrote the original is made patent by their glaring errors of translation, but the Cotton text asserts in the preface that it was made by Mandeville himself, and this assertion was until lately taken on trust by almost all modern historians of English literature. The words of

3854-513: The abbey; this may be true of "Mangevilayn" or it may be apocryphal. There is also an inscription near the entrance of St Albans Abbey, which reads as follows: Siste gradum properans, requiescit Mandevil urna, Hic humili; norunt et monumental mori Lo, in this Inn of travellers doth lie, One rich in nothing but in memory; His name was Sir John Mandeville; content, Having seen much, with a small continent, Toward which he travelled ever since his birth, And at last pawned his body for ye earth Which by

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3948-494: The book have been laboriously investigated by Albert Bovenschen and George F. Warner. The greater part of these more distant travels, extending from Trebizond to Hormuz , India , the Malay Archipelago and China , and back to western Asia, has been appropriated from the narrative of Friar Odoric (1330). These passages are almost always swollen with interpolated particulars, usually of an extravagant kind. However, in

4042-409: The book is real, it is widely believed that "Sir John Mandeville" himself was not. Common theories point to a Frenchman by the name of Jehan à la Barbe. Other possibilities are discussed below. Some more recent scholars have suggested that Mandeville's Travels was most likely written by Jan de Langhe  [ fr ] , a Fleming who wrote in Latin under the name Johannes Longus. Jan de Langhe

4136-554: The borrowed stories are frequently claimed as such experiences. In addition to those already mentioned, he alleges that he had witnessed the curious exhibition of the garden of transmigrated souls (described by Odoric) at Cansay, i.e., Hangzhou . He and his fellows with their valets had remained fifteen months in service with Kublai Khan , the Emperor of Cathay in his wars against the King of Manzi , or Southern China , which had ceased to be

4230-480: The corresponding portion has been borrowed from that English version which had already been made from the Latin. The other is in the British Library manuscript Cotton Titus Grenville Collection c. 1410 xvi. (Midland dialect, about 1410–1420?), representing a text completed, and revised throughout, from the French, though not by a competent hand. The Egerton text , edited by George Warner, has been printed by

4324-405: The current English text cannot possibly have been made by Mandeville himself. Of the original French there is no satisfactory edition, but Vogels has undertaken a critical text, and Warner has added to his Egerton English text the French of a British Library manuscript, with variants from three others. An illuminated Middle English copy c. 1440, possibly from Bersted , Kent , fetched £289,250 at

4418-509: The description of Mount Sinai , Et est celle vallee mult froide . Consequently, the corresponding English version has "That ys to say amonge hem Roys Ils and this vale ys ful colde"! All English printed texts before 1725, and Ashton's 1887 edition, follow these defective copies, and in only two known manuscripts has the lacuna been detected and filled up. One of them is the British Library manuscript Egerton MS 1982 ( Northern dialect , about 1410–1420 ?), in which, according to Vogels,

4512-462: The early part of his life, Al-Nasir Muhammad reigned until 1341, a duration unparalleled in Muslim Egypt , while the work describes that during the last thirty years of his reign, Egypt rose to a high pitch of wealth and prosperity. Mandeville, however, then goes on to say that his eldest son, Melechemader, was chosen to succeed; but this prince was caused privily to be slain by his brother, who took

4606-404: The end of c. vii., the author says that when stopping in the sultan's court at Cairo he met a venerable and expert physician of "our" parts, but that they rarely came into conversation because their duties were of a different kind, but that long afterwards at Liège he composed this treatise at the exhortation and with the help ( Jiortatu et adiutorio ) of the same venerable man, as he will narrate at

4700-422: The end of it. And in the last chapter, he says that in 1355, on returning home, he came to Liège, and being laid up with old age and arthritic gout in the street called Bassesavenyr, i.e. Basse-Sauvenière, consulted the physicians. That one came in who was more venerable than the others by reason of his age and white hairs, was evidently expert in his art, and was commonly called Magister Iohannes ad Barbam. That

4794-572: The genomes of these cotton species comprise two distinct subgenomes, referred to as the At and Dt (the 't' for tetraploid, to distinguish them from the A and D genomes of the related diploid species). The strategy is to sequence first the D-genome relative of allotetraploid cottons, G. raimondii , a wild South American ( Peru , Ecuador ) cotton species, because of its smaller size due essentially to less repetitive DNA (retrotransposons mainly). It has nearly one-third

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4888-609: The genus Gossypium has long attracted the attention of scientists. The origin of the genus Gossypium is dated to around 5–10 million years ago. Gossypium species are distributed in arid to semiarid regions of the tropics and subtropics. Generally shrubs or shrub-like plants, the species of this genus are extraordinarily diverse in morphology and adaptation , ranging from fire-adapted, herbaceous perennials in Australia to trees in Mexico. Most wild cottons are diploid , but

4982-488: The goal to create a high-quality, draft genome sequence from reads generated by all sources. The public-sector effort has generated Sanger reads of BACs, fosmids, and plasmids, as well as 454 reads. These later types of reads will be instrumental in assembling an initial draft of the D genome. In 2010, two companies ( Monsanto and Illumina ), completed enough Illumina sequencing to cover the D genome of G. raimondii about 50x. They announced they would donate their raw reads to

5076-472: The grey coral moss, and hoary thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime; Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, And seems to bleat – a vegetable lamb Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas writes of the vegetable lamb in his poem La Semaine (1587). In the poem, Adam wanders the Garden of Eden and is amazed by the peculiarity of the creature. Joshua Sylvester translates: But with true beasts, fast in

5170-479: The ground still sticking Feeding on grass, and th' airy moisture licking, Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed; Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes, Of new-yeaned 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 navel grows, and dies that day That they have browzed

5264-477: The indications of astrology (beginning Deus deorum ) and another on distinguishing pestilential diseases (beginning Cum nimium propter instans tempus epidimiate ). "Burgundia" is sometimes corrupted into "Burdegalia", and in English translations of the abridgment almost always appears as "Burdews" ( Bordeaux , France) or the like manuscript Rawlinson D. 251 (15th century) in the Bodleian Library also contains

5358-515: The journey of the faithful Brother Odoric, the companion of the knight Mendavil through India; although here he described his journey first and the other afterwards.") At a later day Sir Thomas Herbert calls Odoric "travelling companion of our Sir John" Mandeville and anticipates criticism, in at least one passage, by suggesting the probability of his having travelled with Odoric. Much of Mandeville's matter, particularly in Asiatic geography and history,

5452-423: The kingdom under the name of Meleclimadabron. "And he was Soldan when I departed from those countries". Now Al-Nasir Muhammad was followed in succession by no less than eight of his sons in thirteen years, the first three of whom reigned in aggregate only a few months. The names mentioned by Mandeville appear to represent those of the fourth and sixth of the eight, viz. al-Salih Ismail and al-Muzzafar Hajji; and these

5546-551: The lamb's existence, and gave the location of the creature as being near the Caspian Sea , between the Jaick (Ural) and Volga rivers. The creature grown from the melon-like seeds described was said to grow to 2.5 ft (0.76 m), resembling a lamb in most ways except a few. It was said to have blood, but not true flesh, as it more closely resembled that of a crab . Unlike a normal lamb, its hooves were said to be made of parted hair. It

5640-415: The latter has followed its thread, though digressing on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveler. Examples include Boldensele's account of Cyprus , of Tyre and the coast of Palestine , of the journey from Gaza to Egypt , passages about Babylon of Egypt , about Mecca , the general account of Egypt, the pyramids , some of the wonders of Cairo , such as

5734-400: The legend tells of the "jeduah", a human-shaped plant-animal connected to the earth from a stem attached to its navel. The jeduah was believed to be aggressive, though, grabbing and killing any creature that wandered too close. Like the Barometz, it too died once severed from its stem. The Minorite Friar Odoric of Pordenone , upon recalling first hearing of the vegetable lamb, told of trees on

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5828-430: The legs being formed by the severed petiole bases. The German scholar and physician Engelbert Kaempfer accompanied an embassy to Persia in 1683 with the intention of locating the lamb. After speaking with native inhabitants and finding no physical evidence of the lamb-plant, Kaempfer concluded it to be nothing but legend. However, he observed the custom of removing an unborn lamb from its mother's womb in order to harvest

5922-511: The life of John Mandeville is mere invention. No contemporary corroboration of the existence of such a Jehan de Mandeville is known. Some French manuscripts, not contemporary, give a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III of England , but so vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject. Compilation is thought, in large part, to have come from a Liège physician known as Johains à le Barbe or Jehan à la Barbe, otherwise Jehan de Bourgogne. Evidence for this comes from

6016-501: The neighboring grass away. Oh! Wondrous nature of God only good, The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood. The nimble plant can turn it to and fro, The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe, The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit, The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute: The plant with plants his hungry paunch doth feede, Th' admired beast is sowen a slender seed. In his work Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata (1791), De la Croix writes of

6110-478: The number of bases of tetraploid cotton (AD), and each chromosome is only present once. The A genome of G. arboreum , the 'Old-World' cotton species (grown in India in particular), would be sequenced next. Its genome is roughly twice the size of G. raimondii' s. Once both A and D genome sequences are assembled, then research could begin to sequence the actual genomes of tetraploid cultivated cotton varieties. This strategy

6204-401: The original "je eusse cest livret mis en latin ... mais ... je l'ay mis en rōmant" were mistranslated as if "je eusse" meant "I had" instead of "I should have", and then (whether of fraudulent intent or by the error of a copyist thinking to supply an accidental omission) the words were added "and translated it aȝen out of Frensche into Englyssche." Mätzner seems to have been the first to show that

6298-496: The plant that, once separated from it, would perish. The vegetable lamb was believed to have blood, bones, and flesh like that of a normal lamb. It was connected to the earth by a stem, similar to an umbilical cord, that propped the lamb up above ground. The cord could flex downward, allowing the lamb to feed on the grass and plants surrounding it. Once the plants within reach were eaten, the lamb died. It could be eaten, once dead, and its blood supposedly tasted sweet like honey. Its wool

6392-416: The principal commercial species, such as resistance to insects and diseases, and drought tolerance. Cotton fibres occur naturally in colours of white, brown, green, and some mixing of these. A public genome sequencing effort of cotton was initiated in 2007 by a consortium of public researchers. They agreed on a strategy to sequence the genome of cultivated, allotetraploid cotton. "Allotetraploid" means that

6486-424: The public. This public relations effort gave them some recognition for sequencing the cotton genome. Once the D genome is assembled from all of this raw material, it will undoubtedly assist in the assembly of the AD genomes of cultivated varieties of cotton, but a lot of hard work remains. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville The Travels of Sir John Mandeville , commonly known as Mandeville's Travels ,

6580-532: The reader's possible discovery that it was stolen by the interpolation: "And some of our fellows accorded to enter, and some not. So there were with us two worthy men, Friars Minor, that were of Lombardy , who said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so, upon the gracious trust of God and of them, we caused mass to be sung, and made every man to be shriven and houselled ; and then we entered fourteen persons; but at our going out we were but nine". In referring to this passage, it

6674-589: The readers. It is difficult to decide on the character of his statements as to recent Egyptian history . In his account of that country, though the series of the Comanian (of the Bahri dynasty ) sultans is borrowed from Hetoum down to the accession of Mel echnasser ( Al-Nasir Muhammad ), who came first to the throne in 1293, Mandeville appears to speak from his own knowledge when he adds that this "Melechnasser reigned long and governed wisely". In fact, though twice displaced in

6768-460: The received medieval opinion: "Some say that they are tombs of the great lords of antiquity, but that is not true, for the common word through the whole country near and far is that they are Joseph's Granaries ... [for] if they were tombs, they would not be empty inside". There is, indeed, only a small residuum of the book to which genuine character, as containing the experiences of the author, can possibly be attributed. Yet, as has been intimated,

6862-747: The region. He had often been to Jerusalem, and had written in Romance languages as they were generally more widely understood than Latin . It is fairly clear that "Sir John Mandeville" was an invented author, and various suggestions have been put forward as to the real one. Most of these are figures from France or the Low Countries who had not travelled as widely as the author; none have achieved general acceptance. The book very largely depends on other travel books, sometimes embroidered with legendary or fantastical elements. Mandeville's Travels may contain facts and knowledge acquired by actual travels and residents in

6956-402: The reported endonyms of Borometz , Borametz and Boranetz . In his book, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (1887), Henry Lee describes the legendary lamb as believed to be both a true animal and a living plant. However, he states that some writers believed the lamb to be the fruit of a plant, sprouting forward from melon-like seeds. Others, however, believed the lamb to be a living member of

7050-538: The shore of the Irish Sea with gourd-like fruits that fell into the water and became birds called Bernacles. He is referring to the legendary plant-animal known as the barnacle tree , which was believed to drop its ripened fruit into the sea near the Orkney Islands. The ripened fruit would then release " barnacle geese " that would live in the water, growing to mature geese. The alleged existence of this fellow plant-animal

7144-494: The shorter fibres, called "linters", are removed, and these are woven into lower quality textiles (which include the eponymous lint ). Commercial species of cotton plant are G. hirsutum (97% of world production), G. barbadense (1–2%), G. arboreum and G. herbaceum (together, ~1%). Many varieties of cotton have been developed by selective breeding and hybridization of these species. Experiments are ongoing to cross-breed various desirable traits of wild cotton species into

7238-573: The slave-market, the chicken -hatching stoves, and the apples of paradise (i.e., plantains ), the Red Sea , the convent on Sinai , the account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre , etc. As an example, when discussing the pyramids, Boldensele wrote that "the people of the country call them Pharaoh's Granaries . But this cannot be true at all, for no place for putting in the wheat can be found there". Mandeville then completely reverses it in favor of

7332-651: The soft wool and believed the practice to be a possible source of the legend. He speculated further that museum specimens of the fetal wool could be mistaken for a vegetable substance. In Erasmus Darwin 's work The Botanic Garden (1781), he writes of the Borametz: E'en round the Pole the flames of love aspire, And icy bosoms feel the secret fire, Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air, Shines, gentle borametz, thy golden hair Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends, Crops

7426-453: The sphericity of the earth, provided that the city were on the equator. The oldest known manuscript of the original—once Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Barrois's, afterwards Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham 's, now Nouv. Acq. Franc. 4515 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France —is dated 1371, but is nevertheless very inaccurate in proper names. An early printed Latin translation made from

7520-538: The statements of Mandeville do not fit. On several occasions, Arabic words are given, but are not always recognizable, owing perhaps to the carelessness of copyists in such matters. Thus, we find the names (not satisfactorily identified) of the wood, fruit and sap of the Himalayan Balsam ; of bitumen, "alkatran" ( al-Kāṭrān ); of the three different kinds of pepper ( long pepper , black pepper and white pepper ) as sorbotin, fulful and bano or bauo ( fulful

7614-628: The tasks done by Tatar women, with Carpine, p. 643; Mandeville. p. 250, on Tatar habits of eating, with Carpine, pp. 639–640; Mandeville, p. 231, on the titles borne on the seals of the Great Khan , with Carpine, p. 715, etc. The account of Prester John is taken from the famous Epistle of that imaginary potentate, which was widely diffused in the 13th century. Many fabulous stories, again, of monsters, such as Cyclopes , sciapodes , hippopodes , anthropophagi , monoscelides, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders ; of

7708-419: The treatise on herbs a passage is quoted asserting it to have been composed in 1357 in honour of the author's natural lord, Edward III , king of England. This date is corroborated by the title of king of Scotland given to Edward, who had received from Baliol the surrender of the crown and kingly dignity on 20 January 1356, but on 3 October 1357 released King David and made peace with Scotland: unfortunately it

7802-420: The vegetable lamb (translated): For in his path he sees a monstrous birth, The Borametz arises from the earth Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute, A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit, …It is an animal that sleeps by day And wakes at night, though rooted in the ground, To feed on grass within its reach around. Gossypium See text. Gossypium ( / ɡ ɒ ˈ s ɪ p i ə m / )

7896-545: The whole work is borrowed or fictitious. Even the great Moorish traveller Ibn Battuta , accurate and veracious in the main, seems—in one part at least of his narrative—to invent experiences; and, in such works as those of Jan van Hees and Arnold von Harff are examples of pilgrims to the Holy Land whose narratives begin apparently in sober truth, and gradually pass into flourishes of fiction and extravagance. In Mandeville also are particulars not yet traced to other writers, and which may therefore be provisionally assigned either to

7990-407: The wood of the cross , that of the shooting of old Cain by Lamech , that of the castle of the sparrow-hawk (which appears in the tale of Melusine ), those of the origin of the balsam plants at Masariya, of the dragon of Cos, of the river Sambation , etc. In the preface, the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, in the town of St Albans . Although

8084-456: The world . And he tells a curious story, which he had heard in his youth, how a worthy man did travel ever eastward until he came to his own country again. But he repeatedly asserts the old belief that Jerusalem was in the centre of the world, and maintains in proof of this that at the equinox a spear planted erect in Jerusalem casts no shadow at noon, which, if true, would equally consist with

8178-487: The writer's own experience or to knowledge acquired by colloquial intercourse in the East. Whether Mandeville actually travelled or not, he would not necessarily be intentionally making the story up. All travel narratives from this time used the same sources, taken from each other or from the earlier traditions of the Greeks. This tradition was an integral part of such narratives to make them believable (or at least acceptable) to

8272-533: Was accepted as an explanation for migrating geese from the North. In his work The Shui-yang or Watersheep and The Agnus Scythicus or Vegetable Lamb (1892), Gustav Schlegel points to Chinese legends of the "watersheep" as inspiration for the legend of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. Much like the vegetable lamb, the watersheep was believed to be both plant and animal, and tales of its existence placed it near Persia. It

8366-563: Was born in Ypres early in the 1300s and by 1334 had become a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Saint-Bertin in Saint-Omer , which was about 20 miles from Calais . After studying law at the University of Paris, Langhe returned to the abbey and was elected abbot in 1365. He was a prolific writer and avid collector of travelogues, right up to his death in 1383. At least part of Mandeville's Travels and

8460-417: Was connected to the ground by a stem and, if the stem were severed, it would die. The animal was protected from aggressors by an enclosure built around it and by armored men yelling and beating drums. Its wool was also said to be used for fine clothing and headdresses. (In turn, the origin of watersheep is an explanation for sea silk .) Earlier versions of the legend tell of the lamb as a fruit, springing from

8554-438: Was no other saint of the name: this life is followed by part of a French herbal. To Mandeville (by whom de Bourgogne is clearly meant) Jean d'Outremeuse ascribes a Latin "lappidaire selon l'oppinion des Indois", from which he quotes twelve passages, stating that the author (whom he calls knight, lord of Montfort, of Castelperouse, and of the isle of Campdi) had been "baillez en Alexandrie" seven years, and had been presented by

8648-458: Was said to be used by the native people of its homeland to make head coverings and other articles of clothing. The only carnivorous animals attracted to the lamb plant (other than humans) were wolves. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of trees in India "the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree-wool." There is mention of

8742-406: Was the favourite food of wolves and other animals. In 1698 Sir Hans Sloane claimed a Chinese tree fern, Cibotium barometz , was the origin of the myth. Sloane found the specimen in a Chinese cabinet of curiosities he acquired. The "lamb" is produced by removing the leaves from a short length of the fern's woolly rhizome . When the rhizome is inverted, it fancifully resembles a woolly lamb, with

8836-474: Was used as a work of reference: Christopher Columbus , for example, was heavily influenced by both this work and Marco Polo 's earlier Travels . According to the book, John de Mandeville crossed the sea in 1322. He traversed by way of Turkey ( Asia Minor and Cilicia ), Tartary , Persia , Syria , Arabia , Egypt , Libya , Ethiopia , Chaldea , the land of the Amazons , India, China and many countries in

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