Note 24 — Chapter I · THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

See the Chapter on “Mermaids” by the Author in ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ one of the Handbooks issued by the Authorities of the Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. London. Clowes and Sons, Limited.

[25] I know of only four—(though, of course, there may be others, of which I shall be glad to receive information)—namely, one in the Botanical department of the British Museum; another in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; the specimen sent from India by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society in 1698; and that described by Dr. Breyn in 1725. Of the origin of the first-mentioned nothing is known, though it is apparently the one figured by John and Andrew Rymsdyk, in their ‘Museum Britannicum’ (1778, plate xv.), as one of the curious objects in the British Museum. Of the second we only know that it was presented to the College of Surgeons by Mr. Quekett—the habitat of the fern of which it is composed being erroneously given in the Catalogue (No. 177 of “Plants and Invertebrates”) as “Plains of Tartary,” the supposed home of the mythical lamb, but where the fern in question never grew. That sent to England by Mr. Buckley, and which was the subject of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper in 1698, seems to have been lost or mislaid. Whether it remained in the possession of the Royal Society, or was placed by Sir Hans Sloane in his own collection, it ought to be in the British Museum. But nothing is known of it there, nor of the cabinet of surgical instruments and appliances in which it arrived. I have endeavoured to trace it; but although, as usual, I have met with every kind assistance and courtesy from the heads of departments, I have been unsuccessful.

Sir Hans Sloane, who died in 1753, bequeathed his valuable collection and library to the nation on the condition that £20,000 should be paid to his executors for the benefit of his daughters. The Government raised the necessary funds by a guinea lottery, and sufficient money was thus obtained to purchase also (for £10,500) Montague House, in Bloomsbury, which then became the British Museum. When the Royal Society removed from their old premises, in Crane Court, to Somerset House in 1780 they also gave the contents of their cabinets to the National Collection, but many of these, and amongst them this fern-root animal, cannot be found.

Dr. Breyn, of Dantzic, no doubt retained the specimen which he described, and it is probably in some continental collection.

I know, therefore, of only two of these so-called “lambs” extant in this country—one in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and the other in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No history of either of these has been preserved.