In the case of bestiaries, similarly to herbals, the monks generally copied and cited previous texts to pass them on. Unlike the herbals, the monks could not grow an animal in their garden, so largely the information taken from the bestiaries was taken at face value. The consequence of this is that the writers were free to elaborate and embellish upon texts. This was a definite and deliberate attempt to give the animal in question a certain moral or allegorical meaning beyond the physical appearance. These bestiary texts can be very like traditional mythology.