Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk

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Sir Thomas Browne. Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk

Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

NOTES ON CERTAIN FISHES AND MARINE ANIMALS FOUND IN NORFOLK

LETTERS TO MERRETT

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

INDEX

ERRATA

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Sir Thomas Browne

More Especially on the Birds and Fishes

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The first papers to which I shall refer are a series of rough notes contained for the most part in volume 1830 of the Sloane MSS., the first portion being devoted to Birds found in Norfolk, followed by a similar series relating to marine and freshwater Fishes, including a few marine invertebrata and plants. They are written on one side only of foolscap paper, the portion relating to Birds occupying folios 5 to 19 inclusive, folios 1 to 4 consist of two inserted letters from Merrett to Browne (see Appendix A.), which are printed by Wilkin in his first edition, Vol. I., pp. 442–5. The notes on Fishes are in the same volume of manuscripts, folios 23 to 38; but there are some irregularities which will be explained as they occur. The whole of the notes are very roughly written, and present the appearance of a commonplace book, in which the entries were made as the events occurred to the writer, being quite devoid of any system or arrangement. The entries doubtless extend over several years, but it is impossible to fix the dates on which they were made, the only internal evidence I can find being that speaking of the occurrence of a certain shark he states it was taken "this year, 1662," and on the next page of the MS. there is the record of the occurrence of a sun-fish in the year 1667; this latter, however, is evidently an interpolation. A few pages further on there is the record of what he calls a large mackerel, "taken this year, 1668," but this also is an addition. We may take it, I think, that most of the notes were made about the year 1662, but that they were added to on various occasions up to 1668, in which year his first letter to Merrett is dated. It has been suggested that these notes were prepared in the interest of Dr. Merrett for his use in an enlarged edition of his Pinax, but the remark in his first letter to this correspondent, "I have observed and taken notice of many animals in these parts whereof 3 years agoe a learned gentleman of this country wished me to give him some account, which while I was doing ye gentleman my good friend died," clearly shows that they were originally prepared for another purpose, although they eventually furnished the materials for his letters to Merrett, but who his deceased friend was it seems now useless to conjecture, although it would be interesting to know. The notes were certainly never intended to appear in their present form, and failing their use by Merrett which never took place, the information they contained was, as we know, of great service to Ray and Willughby.

Browne's correspondent, Dr. Christopher Merrett, was born at Winchcomb, in Gloucestershire, on the 16th of February, 1614. He graduated B.A. at Oriel College, Oxford, about the year 1635; M.B. 1636; M.D. 1643. Was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1651, and was made first Keeper of the Library and Museum; he was Censor of the College seven times. Having entered into litigation with the College with regard to his appointment, which was considered by that body to have terminated when the Library was destroyed by the great fire, he was defeated, and in 1681 expelled from his fellowship. He died in London in 1695. ("Dict. of Nat. Biog.") Merrett was the author of several works on various subjects, as well as of the Pinax, and a translation of the "Art of Glass" referred to further on. His Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum, said to have been brought out in 1666, contained the earliest list of British Birds ever published, but it is little more than a bare list. Copies bearing the date of 1666 are very rare, and it is believed the edition was burned in a fire at the publishers; but Professor Newton ("Dict. of Birds," Introduction, p. xviii.) says that in 1667 there were two issues of a reprint; one, nominally a second edition, only differs from the others in having a new title-page, an example doubtless of what Wilkin severely condemns as "that contemptible form of lying under which publishers have endeavoured to persuade the public of the rapidity of their sales." Merrett was contemplating a new and improved edition of his work when, as Wilkin happily puts it, "in an auspicious moment he sought the assistance of Browne, whose liberal response is evidenced in the [drafts of the] letters still fortunately extant, but either superseded by the more learned labours of Willughby and Ray, or laid aside on account of the perplexities in which Merrett became involved with the College of Physicians, the Pinax never attained an enlarged edition. Had Browne completed and published his own 'Natural History of Norfolk,' he might have contended for precedency among the writers of County Natural Histories with [his friend] Dr. Robert Plot,[F] who published the earliest of such works—those of Oxford and Staffordshire, in 1677 and 1686 respectively. He seems, however, to have preferred contributing to the labours of those whom he considered better naturalists than himself; and in his third attempt thus to render his observations useful he had somewhat better success. He placed his materials, including a number of coloured drawings, at the disposal of Ray, the father of systematic Natural History in Great Britain, who has acknowledged the assistance he derived from him in his editions of Willughby's 'Ornithology' and 'Ichthyology,' especially in the former. But Browne, it seems, found it more easy to lend than to recover such materials; for he complains, several years afterwards, that these drawings, of whose safe return he was assured, both by Ray and by their mutual friend, Sir Philip Skippon, had not been sent back to him."[G]

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