These included cast iron, the ploughshare, the stirrup, gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass and clockwork escapements, most of which were thought at the time to be western inventions.
They are similar in form and habits to other chimaeras, but are distinguished by the presence of an elongated, flexible, fleshy snout, with a vague resemblance to a ploughshare.
The ploughshare represents agriculture, while the oak twig stands for the mixed forest that covers roughly a fourth (about 100 ha) of the municipal area.
The shipment includes a stunning number of ploughshare tortoises, of which there are only a few hundred left in the wild, making it one of the world's rarest tortoise species.
