[This volume contains a Miscellaneous collection, mostly letters to his son Edward, and some to "Tom." The following (as all in the volume) is on letter-sized paper, 7-1/2 × 6 in.]
Worthy Sr
[Fol. 198.] Though I writ vnto you last monday. yet hauing omitted some few things wch I thought to have mentioned I am bold to giue you this trouble so soone agayne haue you putt in a sea fish calld a bleak [see Note 74] a fish like an herring often taken with us and eat butt a more lanck & thinne & drye fish.
The wild swanne or elk [see Note 8] would not bee omitted, [here crossed out] being com̄on in hard winters & differenced from [the crossed out] our River swanns by the Aspera Arteria. [See also pp. 80 and 83 infra.]
Fulica and cotta Anglorum [see Note 23] are different birds though good resemblance between them, so some doubt may bee made whether it bee to bee made a coote except you set it downe fulica nostras. & cotta Anglorum I pray consider whether that waterbird whose draught I sent in the last box & thought it might bee named Anatula or mergulus melanoleucos may not bee some gallinula. it hath some resemblance with gallina hypoleucos of Johnst Tab 32 [31] butt myne hath shorter wings by much & the bill not so long [Fol. 198 verso] & slender & shorter leggs & lesser & so may ether be calld gallina Aquatica hypoleucos nostras or hypoleucos or melanoleucos Anatula or mergulus nostras.[119]
[119] The "draught" of this bird sent to Merrett is not forthcoming. Professor Newton has been kind enough to send me the following note on this puzzling passage. "Jonston's figure (tab. 31) of Gallina hypoleucos, to which Browne says it bore some resemblance, undoubtedly represents what we know as the Common Sandpiper, Totanus hypoleucus or Actitis hypoleuca, the Fysterlin of the Germans of Jonston's time (p. 160), and Fisterlein or Pfisterlein of modern days. But there seems to be some strange confusion that cannot now be cleared, between this bird and Browne's Anatula or Mergulus melanoleucos [see p. 76 ante], of which some years later, he sent a drawing, under the latter name, to Willughby, in whose work it is described and figured (Lat. Ed. p. 261, Engl. 343, tab. lix.), for this most certainly is the Rotche or Little Auk, Mergulus alle of modern ornithology." In the next letter (p. 81), Browne mentions that he encloses the draft of "Ralla aquatica" here referred to.
Tis much there should be no Icon of Rallus or Ralla Aquatica I haue a draught of one & they are found among us
Feb xii 1668.
The vesicaria I sent is like that you mention [see Note 91] if not the same the com̄on fanago resembleth the husk of peas this of [Part crossed out] Barly when the flower is mouldred away. [See also p. 89 infra, where Merrett aptly compares the latter to the flowers of the Grape Hyacinth.]
[BIBLIOTHECA BODLEIANA. MS. RAWLINSON D. cviii. SR THO BROWN TO DR. MERRETT.]
[Fol. 105.] Sr I craue your pardon for this delayed returne unto your last, whose courteus acceptance & worthy entertaynment [?] deserued [a speed blotted out] even a speedier reply. The small plant may fitly come in among the corallines upon the [diff crossed out] account of articulation Icthyorachius [see Note 114] I think will bee a good Diference [?]. whether you will subexpand [?] the word I referre it to yourself. certhia may best bee vertice aureo [word blotted out] or vertice aureo penicello vix imitando. morinellus marinus [see Note 28] I think rather then Aquaticus becuse it is seen most about the sea coast. Anas alis oculatis[120] rather then Anser for it is not altogether so longe as a wild duck. of porci solidipedes [see Note 118] there are still in this country in some places. and I am promised a pigge by a Gentleman that hath still a boar and sow of that kind. I tooke notice of them 26 years ago & having not lately [met with crossed out] met with any thought the race had been worne out butt I perceue it is not—they are whole footed in the forfeet & have [only crossed out] a seame only in the hinder. so they are animalia duplici nomine im̄unda. The wild swans or elk [see Note 8] in [very crossed out] lasting cold winters are most plentifull. It is larger then the River swan somewhat gray & of a lowder note & [differenced call crossed out] a recuruation of the Aspera arteria in the sternon as I noted in the margin long agoe in vulgar errors. the blicca marina [see Note 74] may well be named Harengiformis. [several words smeared out] I have the draught of that an Herring & a pilcher in one paper upon that account [Fol. 104 verso] I belieue [?] you were well informd of the cotta [see p. 79] & fulica of our Ralla Aquatica I enclose a draught.
Of porci solidipedes there are diuers still in the country in some places I am promised a pigge by a friend who cherisheth that [new crossed out] breed. I tooke notice of them 26 yeares ago, & hauing not lately minded them thought they had been worn out butt I perceiue they are not—some are more plainly wholefooted then others & especially in the fore feet & in the rest there is no thorough fissure butt at most a superficiall seame, so they are [No. 3 cap 27 above] Quadrupedia duplici nomine im̄unda.
[This last paragraph seems to have been written by way of emendation of what appears above on the same subject. A photograph of a portion of the above letter will, by the courtesy of the Bodleian Librarian, be found as a frontispiece to this volume. Mr. Jenkinson, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, and through him, Mr. G. F. Warner and Mr. Kenyon, of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum, have kindly interested themselves in the transcript of this letter, which was very difficult to decipher.]
BIBLIOTHECA BODLEIANA (MS. RAWL. D. cviii.)
[Draft of a letter from Sir Thomas Browne, described in the Catalogue of the Rawlinson MSS. as to the Secretary of the Royal Society, but from its contents evidently written to Merrett, whose letter, dated 8th May, 1669, is in part a reply to it.]
[Fol 58.] Honord Sr I humbly thank you for your care of my sonnes paper & the Royll Societie for their acceptance of it. If hee bee in health I knowe hee is mindfull of their com̄ands receiued aboue 2 months ago by a letter from Mr. Oldenburg.[121] I haue not heard from him of late the last I receiued was from Komorn[R] in Lower Hungary and hee was then going to the mine countryes. I think the Rowd may bee calld Rutilus ventre magis compresso[122] wch is the first discoverable difference to the eye. The weazelling [see Note 60] is as you see in the draught a long fish figura ad teretem vergente. somewhat of the shape butt differing in the head from the mustela viuipara of Schoneueld. butt not lozenged on the back though the back bee much darker then the other parts. I send you the figure of the head of a cristated wild duck. it is black blackish [sic] in the greater part of the body some white on the brest & wings blewish legges & bill & seems to bee of the Latirostrous tribe perhaps you haue it not. it may bee called Anas macrolophos [Fol. 59] as excelling in that kind.[123] there is also a draught of one sort of mergus cristatus resembling that of Aldrovandus or Johnstonus where there is only the figure of the head only this is also ruffus butt the head sad red.[124] wee haue a kind of teale which some fowlers call crackling teale from the noyse it maketh[125] it is almost of the bignesse of a duck coming late of the yeare & latest going away hath a russet head & neck with a dark yellow stroak about a quarter of an inch broad from the crowne to the bill winged like a teale a white streake through the middle of the wings and edges thereof the tale blackish. it may be calld Querquedula maior serotina. I send you the figure in litle of a pristis[126] wch I receaued from a yarmouth seaman. you may please to compare it wth yours. the asper you mention is much like our Rough or Aspredo.
[121] Henry Oldenburg (1615-1677) was born at Bremen. Came to England about 1640, where he remained eight years. In 1653 he was sent to England from Bremen on a diplomatic mission to Cromwell. He returned to England a third time in 1660. He was an original Member of the Royal Society, and became one of its first Secretaries. A half-length portrait is in the possession of the Royal Society.
[R] A well-known town on the Danube, forty-seven miles west of Buda-Pesth, probably the Comorra of E. Browne's letter to his father, cf. Wilkin, i., p. 159.
[122] The Rudd (Leuciscus erythrophthalmus, Will.) is known in Norfolk as the Roud. Browne seems to treat it as a variety of the Roach (Rutilus, Willugh.), and Merrett in his second letter remarks with approval "you have very well named the Rutilus."
[123] Fuligula cristata (Linnæus), the Tufted Duck.
[124] Professor Newton suggests that Browne intended to write Mergus cirratus. Aldrovandus figures the head, iii., p. 283, and that of M. longirostris in the preceding page. This last is copied by Jonston (fol. 47). Both birds seem to be female or immature Goosanders. Neither author has a M. cristatus.
[125] The above description certainly applies to the Common Teal, which was well-known to Browne (vide supra, p. 14), and that species is with us all the year; I cannot help thinking, however, that he had in his mind the Garganey, or Summer Teal, so called from the season of its visit to us. This species is known to the Norfolk gunners as the "Cricket Teal," and being slightly larger than the common species it might well be called by him "Querquedula major serotina."
[126] See Note 55, p. 36. It will be noticed that both this and the Centriscus mentioned at p. 41 were given to Browne by a "seaman of these seas," but may possibly have been brought home as curiosities from a foreign voyage; the Saw-fish, however, mentioned at p. 36, is distinctly stated to have been "taken about Lynn." It is a matter of intense regret that the numerous drawings mentioned in these letters should have been lost.
I forgot in my last to signifie that an oter [an other?] Elk or wild swan was headed like a goose that is without any knobb at the bottome of the bill. [See p. 80 and Note 8.]
Haue you had the duck called Clangula in Ald. [drovandus] & Johnst.[127] wee haue one heere wch answereth their descriptions exactly butt [i.e., except] only in the colour of their leggs & feet.
[127] Aldrovandus's figure of "Clangula" (head only, iii., p. 224) is too indefinite for determination. He says the feet are yellow, but Jonston, who refers to it under the name of Anas platyrhincus describes it fairly well (p. 145). Clangula ab alarum clangore, Aldrov., i.e., "Rattlewings," an old name by which the Golden-eye was known to the Norfolk gunners.
Haue you a willock a sea fowl like a rook or crowe.[128]
[128] A local name for the Guillemot. Merrett says, in a letter dated 8th May, 1669, "The Clangula I know no more of than reading hath informed mee; [see Note 127] a willock I have seen brought from Greenland,[S] where they are said exceedingly to abound, but never thought either of them was found in England, and having not taken sufficient notice of the latter, crave your description of both."
[S] The Greenland of those days was Spitsbergen, where they would be met with by the Whalers, but in that case the bird would be Brünnich's Guillemot, a species not then differentiated.
[MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. MS. SLOANE 1847, FOL. 182.]
[Fol. 182.] Sr I craue your pardon that I haue no sooner sent unto you. I shall be very reddie to do you service in order to your desires And shall endeavour to procure you such animalls as I haue formerly met with & any other not ordinary wch [shall crossed out] are to bee acquired. though many of my old assistants are dead. & sometimes they fell upon animalls, [not to bee crossed out] scarce to bee met with agayne. I wish I had been acquainted with your desires 3 yeares ago. for I had about fortie hanging up in my howse. wch the plague being at the next doores the person intrusted in my howse, burnt or threw away. The figure of the weasell Cray [see Note 60 and p. 82] was in a long paper pasted together at the ends & I make no question you will find it otherwise I would send another [the willick wee in crossed out] that fowl wch some call willick, [see Note 128] wee meet with sometimes. The last I met with was taken on the sea shoare. the head and body black the brest inclining to black headed and billd like a crowe, leggs set very backward wings short leggs set very backward (sic) that it move overland very badly only. it may bee a kind of cornix marina. [The latter portion very badly written and difficult to decipher.]
[Fol. 184 verso.] That litle plant upon oyster shells [see Note 91] I remember I haue seen & surely is some kind of vescaria or calicularia
of what that other [was crossed out] electricall body was Mr. Boyle[129] showed [smear] by this time more tryall hath probably been made, something of jet it might consist of.
[129] The Hon. Robert Boyle (1627-1691), although deeply learned in many branches of science, was chiefly distinguished as a chemist. He took a leading part in the founding of the Royal Society, and was elected President in 1680, but from some conscientious scruple did not accept the office. Naturalists are deeply indebted to him, as he was "the first that made trial of preserving animals" in spirit (see Grew's "Musæum Regalis Societatis" (London, 1681), p. 58).
I thank you that you were pleased to enquire of those German gentlemen concerning my sonne I receiued a letter lately from him he hath not been unmindfull of the R. Society's com̄ds & hath been in Hungaria in the mines of Gold, sylver & copper at Schemets, Cremitz & Neusol & desired mee to signifie so much to Mr. Oldenberg.
[The above is hastily scrawled; it was evidently indited to Merrett, as indicated by the reference to the German gentlemen, &c.; the date would therefore be some time in the year 1669. Wilkin prints it in the 1836 Edition, Vol. i., p. 408, but it is not in Bohn's reprint.]
APPENDIX A.
[Reply to No. 2 in the above Series.]
[Fol. 3.] Worthy Sr,—yrs of ye 14th instant I recaeved as full off learning in discovering so many very great curiosities as kindness in communicating them to mee & promising yr farther assistance. ffor which I shall always proclame by my tongue as well as by my pen, my due resentment & thanks.
The 2 funguses [guses crossed out and i inserted] yw sent ye figures off [see Note 106] are ye finest & rarest as to their figure I have ever seen or read of, & soe is yr fibula marina, far surpassing one I reacived from Cornwall much of ye same bigness, neither of which I find anywhere mentioned. The urtica marina minor Jonst. & physalus I never met with, nor have bin informed off ye canis charcharius alius Jonst. Many of ye Lupus piscis I have seen, & have bin informed by ye Kings fish monger they are taken on our coast, but was not satisfyed for some reasons off his relation soe as to enter it into my pinax, though tis said to bee peculiar to ye river Albis [= Elbe] yet I thought they might come sometimes thence to yr coasts. Trutta marina I haue and ye loligo, sepia, & polypus ye 3 sorts off ye molles have bin found on our western coasts which shall bee exactly distinguished—As for ye Salmons taken a bove London towards Richmond & nearer, & yt in great quantity some years they have all off them their lower jaw as yw observ, [see Note 92] & our fishermen [men crossed out] say they usually wear off some part off it on ye banks or els ye lower would grow into ye upper & soe starve them as they have sometimes seen—yw ask whether I haue ye mullus ruber asper, or ye piscis Octangularis Wormii. or ye sea worm longer than ye earth worms, or ye garrulus Argentor. or ye duck cal'd a May chit or ye Dor hawke. The 4 first I haue noe account off ye 2 later I know not especially by those names, wee have noe hawk by yt name [see Note 42] yr account of succinum as all ye rest will bee registered. As for ye Aquila Gesneri I never saw nor heard off any such in ye Collidge for [fol. 3 verso] this 25 years last past. Sr yw are pleased to say yw shall write more if yw know how not to bee surpurfluous—certainly what yw have hitherto done hath bin all curiosities, & I doubt not but yw have many more by you—I can direct yw noe further than yr own reason dictates to yw. Besides those mentioned in ye pinax I have 100 to add, & cannot give yw a particular off them—whatever yw write is either confirmative or additional. I doe entreat this favour off yw to inform mee fuller off those unknown things mentioned herein, & to add ye name page &c. of ye Author if mentioned by any or else to give them such a latin name for them as yw have done by ye fungi which may bee descriptive & differencing off them. Sr I hope ye publigs [sic] interest & yr own good genius will plead yr pardon desired by
yr humble servant
Chr. Merrett.
London Aug. 29. 68.
[Reply to No. 8 of the above Series.]
[Fol. 1.] Worthy Sr,—my due thanks premised I at present acquaint yw yt yw have very well named ye Rutilus & expressed fully ye cours to bee taken in ye imposition of names viz ye most obvious & most peculiar difference to ye ey or any other sens. I am farther to say yt ye icon of ye weazeling came not to my hands, pray bee pleas'd to look amongst yr papers perhaps it might bee laid by through some accident or other [I have added above] ye figures of yr anas macrolophos, & of ye mergi cristati [see Note 124] & of ye pristis yt which came from Cornwall was of ye gladius, ye name of sword fish being applied to both of them by our nation. It seemeth by yw yt ye Norwich aspredo is not ye Ceruna fluviatilis contrary to what Camden affirms, for ye rutilus mentioned in mine to yw differs toto cœlo from ye ceruna—The difference of ye Elks bill by yw signified is remarkable to distinguish it from others of its own kind. [See p. 83 supra.] The crackling teal seems [clearly crossed out] to bee ye same which Dr Charleton[130] mentions in his Onomasticon under ye name of ye cracker,& showing him yr description hee acknowledged to bee ye same, ye clangula I know noe more of than reading hath informed mee, a willock I have seen brought from Greenland where they are said exceedingly to abound, but never yt [thought?] either of them was found in England, & having [not added above] taken sufficient notice of it ye later, crave yr description off both.
[130] In Charleton's "Onomasticon," at p. 99, the Cracker is called by him, Anas caudacuta, and is said to be the "Gaddel" of the London dealers in fowl. [See Note 125.]
And now Sr since my last only 2 things remarkable haue come to my knowledge. The one was a cake off black amber 1/6 off an inch thick & neer a palm each way. Mr. Boyle brought it to ye R. society to whom it was sent from ye Sussex shore, hee had only tryed it to its electricity & found it answer his expectation, farther tryals will be made of it. The second is a small plant found on oyster shells which when fresh did perfectly represent ye flowers off Hyacinthus botryoides, [see Note 91] but yt was somewhat longer & not so much sweld out towards its pedunculus, some of them are here inclosed. Tis doubtless a sort off vesicaria, though much different from what yw sent mee. Most off them are now shrunk & ye sides constituting ye cavity come together & appear only a transparent husk. One thing more I had to add (but scarcely dare speak it out) yt is if it would please [you added above] to let it bee done without yr charge & 2ly if it might be done without yr trouble, then I would beg off yw to set some a work to procure mee some of those rare animals &c. yw have mentioned in your seueral Letters. My intention therein is double: first to take their descriptions & furnish our colledge with them as curiosities, all being lost by ye fire this is onely wished but must not bee proposed without ye former limitation by yr too much allready obliged friend & servant
Chr. Merrett.
8th May '69.
I met this week with some persons off quality high Germans who lately saw yr son & record all good things off him.
ffor Dr Browne off Norwich.
[The reply to this letter is No. IX of the above Series.]
APPENDIX B.
[MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. MS. SLOANE 1847, FOL. 56-57.]
[See Note 51, p. 32 supra.]
Praye Request Mr. Johnson to obtayne this fauor of Mr. Bacon who is unknown to mee, to afford mee his resolution to these few queries concerning the whale [wch crossed out] whereof I understand he had the cutting up and disposure whether there were any spermacetie found, or made out of other parts beside the head; if soe, of what parts & out of what most: and whether any out of the meere fleshie parts whether that wch runne from it about the shoare came out of the mouth.
[Not signed or dated.]
REPLY.
Sr in Answer to your questions conserninge the whale, I founde noe Sperm̄e but in his heade and that after I had taken off his scalpe one tonn weight [or more written above] of a nexuous substance, we found in the circumference as large as a small coach wheele in the middle part certain round pieces of Sperm as bigge as a mans fist some as large as eggs and on the out side of the said rounds, flakes as large as a mans head in forme like hony combs being very white and full of oyle. And that Sp. wch was cast upon the shore I doe conceive came out of his nostrells. thus much ffrom him who doth remayne Sir your humble Servant, Arthur Bacon Yarmouth 10th May 1652.
Browne to Dugdale on certain fossil bones.
["Eastern Counties Collectanea," pp. 193-195].
The letter referred to in the foot-note on page 33, written by Sir Thomas Browne to Dugdale, and formerly in the possession of the late Mr. Arthur Preston of Norwich, whose collection of manuscripts was dispersed by auction in August, 1888, was printed in a brief-lived and little-known local publication, entitled the "Eastern Counties Collectanea" (1872-3), at page 193. In this letter occurs a passage which confirms the doubt expressed as to the Whales which had young ones after coming on shore at Hunstanton being Sperm Whales. They are expressly said to have been of that sort "which seamen call a Grampus," and as Sir Nicholas le Strange, in a MS. preserved in the Muniment room at Hunstanton, applies the name "Grampus" to an undoubted specimen of Hyperoodon rostratus (as shown both by his description and outline sketch) which came ashore there in the year 1700, I have little doubt that the Cetaceans in question belonged to that species and not to Physeter macrocephalus.
This letter is interesting also as filling a gap in Wilkin's series and I therefore reproduce it, omitting only occasional learned digressions which do not affect the subject. The original not being available, I have used the copy in the "Collectanea" before mentioned.
Dugdale, in November, 1658, and again later, had written to Browne, sending him a bone of a "fish which was taken up by Sir Robert Cotton, in digging a pond at the skirt of Conington downe," and asking his opinion thereof. (Wilkin, i., pp. 385 and 390.)
To the first of these letters Browne replied, under date of the 6th December, 1658, "I receaued the bone of the fish, and shall giue you some account of it when I have compared it with another bone which is not by mee" (op. cit. p. 387). The letter which follows and which was unknown to Wilkin supplies this information.
[p. 193.] "Sr I cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious industry of Sr Robert Cotton in preserving so many things of rarity and observation nor commend your own enquiries for the satisfaction of such particulars. The petrified bone you sent me, which with divers others was found underground, near Cunnington, seems to be the vertebra, spondyle or rackbone of some large fish, and no terrestrious animal as some upon sight conceived, as either of Camel, rhinoceros, or elephant, for it is not perforated and hollow but solid according to the spine of fishes in whom the spinal marrow runs in a channel above these solid racks, or spondiles.
"It seems much too big for the largest Dolphins, porpoises, or sword fishes, and too little for a true or grown whale, but may be the bone of some big cetaceous animal, as particularly of that which seamen call a Grampus; a kind of small whale, whereof some come short, some exceed twenty foot. And not only whales but Grampusses have been taken in this Estuarie or mouth of the fenland rivers. And about twenty years ago four were run ashore near Hunstanton and two had young ones after they came to land. But whether this fish were of the longitude of twenty foot (as is conceived) some doubt may be made for this bone containeth little more than an inch in thickness, and not three inches in breadth so that it might have a greater number thereof than is easily allowable to make out that longitude. For of the whale which was cast upon our coast about six years ago a vertebra or rackbone still preserved, containeth a foot in breadth and nine inches in depth, yet the whale with all advantages but sixty-two foot in length. [p, 194.] We are not ready to believe that, wherever such relics of fish or sea animals are found, the sea hath had its course. And Goropius Becanus[131] long ago could not digest that conceit when he found great numbers of shells upon the highest Alps. For many may be brought unto places where they were not first found.
[131] This seems to refer to the "De Gigantibus eorumque reliquiis" of J. van Gorp, Jean Bécan, or Joannes Goropius (as the name is variously given in the "Biographie Universelle" (b. 1518, d. 1572), and apparently published after the Author's death by Jean Chassanion, 8vo, Basileæ, 1580, and another edition in 1587. See Brit. Mus. Cat.; but I have not seen the book.
"Some bones of our whale were left in several fields which when the earth hath obscured them, may deceive some hereafter, that the sea hath come so high. In northern nations where men live in houses of fishbones and in the land of the Icthiophagi near the Red sea where mortars were made of the backbones of whales, doors of their jaws, and arches of their ribs, when time hath covered them they might confound after discoverers.…
"For many years great doubt was made concerning those large bones found in some parts of England, and named Giants' bones till men [p. 195] considered they might be the bones of elephants brought into this island by Claudius, and perhaps also by some succeeding emperors [then follow other ancient examples of the finding 'elephants bones' in various countries attributed to similar modes of introduction]. But many things prove obscure in subterraneous discovery.…
"In some chalk pits about Norwich many stag's horns are found of large beams and branches, the solid parts converted into a chalky and fragile substance, the pithy part sometimes hollow and full of brittle earth and clay. In a churchyard of this city an oaken billet was found in a coffin. About five years ago an humourous man of this country after his death and according to his own desire was wrap't up in a horned hide of an ox and so buried.[T] Now when the memory hereof is past how this may hereafter confound the discoverers and what connjectures will arise thereof it is not easy to conjecture.
[T] Richard Ferrer, of Thurne, by his will, proved about 1654, directed that his "dead body be handsomely trussed up in a black bullock's hide, and be decently buried in the Churchyard of Thurne."—"Norfolk Archæology," v., p. 212.
Sr Your servant to my power,
Tho. Browne.
This is endorsed "Sr Thomas Browne's discourse about the Fish bone found at Conington Com. Hunt, Shown, Dr. Tanner."
APPENDIX C.
[SLOANE MS. ADDITIONAL 5233, LARGE FOLIO, IS A VOLUME LABELLED "DR. EDW. BROWN'S DRAWINGS."]
"Some original drawing of Towns, Castles, Antiquities, Medals &c. by Dr. Edward Browne in his Travels & presented by his Father Sir Thomas Browne. Who hath write upon sevll of them what they are."
The above is the inscription written on the fly-leaf of this volume, which I hoped might have contained some drawings of birds or fishes by Sir Thomas Browne, but there is nothing in it of interest from a Natural History point of view. In Wilkin's Catalogue of the MSS. (Vol. iv., p. 476) it is described as "a collection of very curious drawings (some coloured) of public buildings, habits, fishes, mines, rocks, tombs, and other antiquities, observed by Sir Thos. and Dr. Edward Browne in their travels," but there are no fishes, birds, or other animals in the volume.
APPENDIX D.
Draft of a letter from Sir Thomas Browne to his daughter Elizabeth, enclosing two pictures of a Stork. This and the next letter are in the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawl. D. cviii.)
[Fol. 70.] This is a picture of the stork [see Note 14] I mentiond in my last. butt it is different from the com̄on stork by red lead colourd leggs and bill[132] and the feet hath not vsuall sharp poynted clawes butt resembling a mans nayle, such as Herodotus discribeth the white Ibis of Ægypt to haue. The ends of the wings are black & when shee doth not spred them they make all the lower part of the back looke black, butt the fethers on the back vnder them are white as also the tayle. it fed upon snayles & froggs butt a toad being offered it would not touch it. the tongue is about half an inch long. the quills of the wing are as bigge or bigger then a swans quills. it was shott by the seaside & the wing broake. Some there were who tooke it for an euell omen saying If storks come ouer into England, god send that a com̄onwealth doth not come after.[U]
[132] Browne evidently was not very familiar with the Stork, which is not surprising, seeing that it is a very rare bird in Britain; it may be that he had only seen the bird in its immature stage, for the "red-lead" hue of the legs is very characteristic of the adult bird. [See also Note 14, p. 10.]
[U] In reference to the Dutch fable of those days that Storks would only inhabit republican countries.
That picture with the lesser head is the better.
MS. RAWL. D. cviii.