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"Every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer."—Gilbert White. Seventh Letter to Barrington.

The excellent Memoir of Sir Thomas Browne, in Wilkin's Edition of his works, renders it unnecessary here to repeat what has already been so well done; suffice it to say that he was born in London on the 19th of October, 1605; he was educated at Winchester School and entered at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1623; graduated B.A. 31st January, 1626–7, and M.A. 11th June, 1629. About the year 1633 he was created Doctor of Physick at Leyden. In 1636 he took up his residence in Norwich, in 1637 was incorporated Doctor of Physic in Oxford, and in 1665 was chosen an Honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians. In 1671 Browne was knighted at Norwich by Charles II., and after a useful and honourable career died on his seventy-sixth birthday, the 19th of October, 1682, and his body lies buried in the church of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich.

Browne in early life travelled much and was a voluminous writer; he made many friendships with men celebrated in his day, and his advice and assistance were sought and gratefully acknowledged by Dugdale, Evelyn, Ray and Willughby, Merrett, Sir Robert Paston (afterwards Earl of Yarmouth), Ashmole, Aubrey, and others; but his general correspondence does not now concern us, my object being to supply in a convenient form what I believe will be acceptable to modern naturalists, namely, an accurate transcript of his notes and letters on the "Natural History of the County of Norfolk."

These notes and letters were first published by Simon Wilkin in his Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works in 1835, but they were not treated from a naturalist's point of view, and in some places were not correctly transcribed, added to which, in the vast mass of matter contained in Wilkin's four large volumes (or in the closely printed three volumes of Bohn's Edition), these interesting passages are in danger of being overlooked or are inconvenient for reference. Two letters, moreover, were needed to make the correspondence with Merrett complete, and these I have been enabled to supply. I hope also that my explanatory notes, which I trust will not be deemed too voluminous, will be found more useful than the necessarily brief notes furnished by Wilkin and his collaborators. Furthermore, I think that the retention of the original spelling and punctuation may lend a charm to the quaintness of the language which is in a measure destroyed by any attempt at modernising.

There is much that is interesting bearing upon Natural Science scattered throughout Browne's writings, especially in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, first published in 1646, and the reader cannot fail to be impressed not only with the extent of his classical knowledge but also with the shrewdness with which he pursued his original investigations; but here it is only proposed to deal with certain manuscript notes and a series of rough notes for, or copies of, letters addressed to Dr. Christopher Merrett, the author of the Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum. These, as remarked by their editor, with regard to some other manuscripts published[A] in 1684, under the title of "Certain Miscellany Tracts," were doubtless "rather the diversions than the Labours of his Pen; and … He did, as it were, drop down his Thoughts of a sudden, in those spaces of vacancy which he snatch'd from those very many occasions which gave him hourly interruption;" but I cannot in this instance agree with the conclusion arrived at by the same writer that it "seemeth probable that He designed them for publick use," for they appear to be the rough drafts or memoranda used in the production of the finished letters (which are unfortunately not forthcoming), and were never intended for publication in their present crude form, thus rendering pardonable such annotations as I have ventured to add. But before proceeding further it is necessary to consider briefly the time and circumstances under which they were written, and the state of what passed for Natural Science at that period.

[A] The "Miscellany Tracts" were put forth by "Tho. Tenison" (1636–1715), who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, but was then the Rector of a London parish, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He had been a Norwich school-boy, and subsequently minister of St. Peter's Mancroft. He was doubtless well acquainted with Browne and his family, and hence his reference in the preface quoted to "the Lady and Son of the excellent Authour," who, he says, "deliver'd" the papers to him.

Browne wrote early in the second half of the seventeenth century, during a period of great awakening in the study of Nature. Hitherto it could hardly be said that a direct appeal to the works of Nature had been the prevailing method. Aristotle was still the established authority, and commentaries on his works occupied the minds of men to the exclusion of original investigation, notwithstanding that this great philosopher had himself, both by precept and example, urged the importance of direct observation and inquiry; the Mediæval school of thought still prevailed and cramped every effort at progress. How keenly Browne lamented this spirit of slavish adherence to tradition may be judged from a passage in one of his Essays in the "Vulgar Errors" condemning the obstinate adherence unto antiquity; he writes, "but the mortallist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory adhesion unto authority; and more especially the establishing of our belief upon the dictates of antiquity. For (as every capacity may observe) most men of ages present, so supersticiously do look upon ages past, that the authorities of one exceed the reason of the other." In another place he argues that the present should be the age of authority, seeing that we possess all the wisdom of the ancients which has come down to us, with that of our own times added. In fact, Browne's motto appears to have been "prove all things and hold fast only to that which is good."[B]

[B] There was one form of ancient authority before which Browne bowed down with absolute and unquestioning submission—the authority of the Scriptures. In all secular matters he was ever ready to point the lance and do battle, but all that appealed to him on what he regarded as divine authority was beyond the pale, and it never entered into his mind to submit it to the test of reason. In the "Religio Medici" he declares his devoted adherence first to the guidance of Scripture, and secondly to the Articles of the Church, "whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason;" and again, "where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my text; where that speaks 'tis but my comment; where there is a joint silence of both I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason." This implicit adherence to the literal text of Scripture led to his—shall I say active belief in, or passive acceptance of, the existence of Witchcraft, and thus to the only act in an otherwise blameless life which we must regard with regret and astonishment. I refer to the consenting part he took in the doing to death of two poor women at Bury St. Edmund's in the year 1664. It is my business to act as Browne's exponent, not as his apologist, but it must be borne in mind that in his day the "higher criticism" was a thing unheard of, and that the literal sense of the English translation of the Bible was accepted as binding not only by him but by the vast majority of the people, including the most learned men of the time. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" was a plain command, and given a witch the believer's duty was also plain; that there had been witches there was ample scriptural evidence, but there was none that the days of witchcraft had passed away. Browne only shared this belief with his pious friend, the venerable Bishop Hall, and many men equally devout according to their lights; he makes no secret of the fact and acts in accordance with his convictions and the plain authority of Scripture. Thus it came about that these conscientious but mistaken men were induced to render possible, if not actually to countenance, the fiendish cruelties perpetrated by their unscrupulous allies. In matters which he considered less authoritative his views were so liberal as to gain for him the stigma of infidel or heretic; but let a man govern his thoughts and actions by the private rules Browne laid down for his own guidance (vol. iv., p. 420), and it would be hard to regard him as otherwise than a God-fearing man, striving to live up to his profession.

Aristotle, whose works on Natural History have descended to us in a very imperfect condition, lived in 385–322 B.C., and it was not till A.D. 79 that the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the Elder the next great work, which has survived till our days, was completed, and by some of those most competent to form a judgment the additions which he made were not in all cases improvements. Other writers followed, but their productions were of little value, and it was not till the year 1544 that William Turner published at Cologne what Professor Newton describes as "the first commentary on the birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny conceived in anything like the spirit that moves modern Naturalists." Turner's book is very rare and unfortunately at present beyond the reach of most modern students. No attempt at systematic arrangement, as now understood, was made until the Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux of Pierre Belon (Bellonius) appeared at Paris in 1555, for the much greater work of Conrad Gesner, being the third book of his Historia Animalium, which was published at Zurich in the same year, and treated of Birds, followed, more or less closely, an alphabetical plan which brought upon him the censure of Aldrovandus, three of whose sixteen folio volumes forming the Historia Naturalium bore the title of Ornithologiæ hoc est de Avibus Historiæ, Libri XII., and were brought out at Bologna between the years 1599 and 1603. The Historia Naturalis of John Jonston, or "Jonstonus" (1603–1675), originally published in four sections between the years 1649 and 1653, ran through several editions, and was a popular book in the seventeenth century; it is frequently referred to by Browne, but is a work of very little originality. Though all these authors undoubtedly influenced their successors, it may be fairly said that it was Browne's contemporaries and fellow-countrymen, Francis Willughby and John Ray, who laid the first solid foundation of systematic zoology in their Ornithologia and Historia Piscium, published in 1676 and 1686 respectively; but dying in 1682, Browne was indebted to neither of them, though he doubtless exercised much influence over them, and he had to use the clumsy descriptive terminology then in vogue.[C] Let me illustrate this by a single example. In one of his letters to Merrett he names a "little elegant sea plant" (probably Halecium halecinum, a species of Hydroid Zoophyte), "Fucus marinus vertebratus pisciculi spinum referens ichthyorachius, or what you think fit." On another occasion Merrett thus expresses his approval of Browne's efforts in this direction: "You have very well named the rutilus and expressed fully the cours to bee taken in the imposition of names, viz: the most obvious and most peculiar difference to the ey or any other sens." We can hardly conceive the difficulties these pioneers of Natural Science had to contend with; the works of their predecessors were so indefinite as to be of little value in determining species; they had to depend upon the vague descriptions of fowlers and others; the same bird would probably be known in half a dozen different localities by as many different names, and since no satisfactory mode of preserving specimens had then been discovered, examples for comparison were not available. If inextricable confusion arose with regard to such a bird as the Osprey, well might Browne write with regard to those less readily characterized, "I confess for such little birds I am much unsatisfied on the names given to many by countrymen, and uncertaine what to give them myself, or to what classis of authors cleerly to reduce them. Surely there are many found among us which are not described; and therefore such which you cannot well reduce, may (if at all) be set down after the exacter nomination of small birds as yet of uncertain class of knowledge."

[C] In 1735 appeared the first edition of the Systema Naturæ of Linnæus which, meagre as it was, ushered in a more definite system of classification, whilst his invention of the binomial method of nomenclature, first used by him in the tenth edition of that work published in 1758, contributed not a little in reducing to order what had hitherto been a chaos, although in his classification of birds he for the most part followed his predecessor Ray.

I must ask pardon for this digression, but my object has been to show the difficulties Browne had to contend with and to emphasise the originality which pervades all his observations, a characteristic so conspicuously absent in the work of most of his predecessors. I should like also to call attention to his references to the migratory habits of many species of birds, a phenomenon attracting little notice in his day, but one which can be so readily observed on the coast of Norfolk. These remarks were penned at a time when hibernation in a state of torpidity was thoroughly believed in—an idea of which even Gilbert White a hundred years later could not thoroughly divest himself. In his tract on "Hawks and Falconry," Browne further says: "How far the hawks, merlins, and wild-fowl which come unto us with a north-west [east?] wind in Autumn, fly in a day, there is no clear account: but coming over the sea their flight hath been long or very speedy. For I have known them to light so weary on the coast, that many have been taken with dogs, and some knocked down with staves and stones." Further than this, he knew the seasons of their appearing—the Hobby "coming to us in the spring," the Merlin "about autumn." His frequent mention of anatomical peculiarities and of his dissections of many birds and beasts clearly prove his passion for original research, and the frequent records of the contents of the stomachs of the birds which he had the opportunity of examining was a mode of obtaining exact information as to the nature of their food, which I imagine was not common in those days.

How highly Browne was esteemed by his contemporaries may be judged from the acknowledgments of his assistance by Dugdale, Evelyn (who visited him in Norwich in 1671), and others; and Ray especially mentions his indebtedness to "the deservedly famous Sir Thomas Browne, Professor of Physic in the City of Norwich." His letters to his son, Dr. Edward Browne, are full of instructions as to the course of study he should pursue, and subsequently, when the latter became celebrated and was appointed Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, it was still to his father that he looked for advice in his hospital practice and in the preparation of his lectures. Browne was proud of his adopted county, a feeling evidently shared by his son, and I trust I may be pardoned for quoting the concluding passage of the latter's account of a tour into Derbyshire, wherein he expresses a sentiment which survives with undiminished force in the breast of many a Norfolk man in the present day. There is a very interesting account of his crossing the Wash on leaving Lynn for Boston, but on his return to Norwich in September, 1662, he thus concludes his journal: "Give me leave to say this much: let any stranger find mee out so pleasant a country, such good way [roads], large heath, three such places as Norwich. Yar [Yarmouth] and Lin [Lynn], in any county of England, and I'll bee once again a vagabond to visit them."

The manuscripts of which the following selection forms a part are contained, with a few exceptions to be named hereafter, in the Sloane Collection in the Library of the British Museum, consisting of nearly one hundred volumes, numbered 1825 to 1923 both inclusive. A catalogue is given by Simon Wilkin[D] (himself a Norfolk man), by whom Browne's collected writings were first published in a connected form, as already mentioned, under the title of "Sir Thomas Browne's Works, including his Life and Correspondence, edited by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S. London, William Pickering. Josiah Fletcher, Norwich, 1836." 4 volumes, 8vo; the first volume only is dated 1836, Vols. 2, 3, and 4 being dated 1835.[E] It was here that the Notes and Letters were first given to the public. A second edition of the "Works," also edited by Wilkin, in three closely printed volumes, was issued in Bohn's Antiquarian Library in 1852. In the first edition the Notes on the Birds and Fishes will be found in Vol. IV., pp. 313 to 336, and the letters to Merrett in Vol. I., pp. 393 to 408. In the second edition both are in Vol. III., pp. 311 to 335 and pp. 502 to 513 respectively. The references here, as a rule, will be made to the 1836 edition, when otherwise Bohn's edition will be specified.

[D] Simon Wilkin (1790–1862), the able editor of Sir Thomas Browne's collected works, was born at Costessey near Norwich, in the year 1790. He came to Norwich after his father's death in 1799, taking up his temporary abode with his guardian, Joseph Kinghorn, a Baptist minister of note and a prominent member of a literary circle then existing in Norwich, by whom his education was superintended. On arriving at man's estate and being at that time possessed of ample means, he devoted himself to the study of Natural History, especially to Entomology, and was the possessor of a large collection of insects which, in the year 1827, was purchased for the Norwich Museum at a cost of one hundred guineas, a large sum in those days. He was one of the founders and the first librarian of the Norfolk and Norwich Literary Institution in 1822, also of the Norfolk and Norwich Museum in 1825, both of which institutions (the former reunited to its parent Library, founded in 1784) are still flourishing. Wilkin was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, also a Member of the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh. In later years the loss of the bulk of his property by a commercial failure necessitated his turning his attention to some means of earning a livelihood, and he established himself in Norwich as a printer and publisher; later in life he removed to Hampstead, where he died on 28th July, 1862, and was buried in his native village of Costessey.

[E] Some copies of this Edition have a title-page, bearing the name of H. G. Bohn as publisher, and the date of 1846, but differing only in that respect.

The foot-notes in Wilkin's edition, many of them very curious, initialled "Wr.," are by Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor (father of the Architect of St. Paul's Cathedral), and were found on the margins of a copy of the first edition of the Pseudodoxia now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; those initialled "G." were written for Wilkin's first edition by the late Miss Anna Gurney, of Northrepps, near Cromer, Norfolk.

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]

[F] Dr. Robert Plot (1640–1696) was born at Sutton Barne, Kent, in 1640; he graduated M.A. in 1664, and D.C.L. at Oxford in 1671. He was chiefly noted as an antiquary, and was Secretary of the Royal Society from 1682 to 1684, also the first custodian of the Ashmoleian Museum and Professor of Chemistry at Oxford. In 1677 he published his "Natural History of Oxfordshire," the first local work of the kind which appeared; it was illustrated by sixteen plates. In 1686 he also published "The Natural History of Staffordshire," and subsequently many other books and papers. He was evidently acquainted with most of the learned men of his time. Plot died at his family estate Sutton Barne, on the 30th of April, 1696, and was buried at Borden in Kent. Dr. Plot was a friend of Browne's, and his companion in a tour in England in 1693.—"Dict. Nat. Biog."

[G] See letter to his son, Dr. Edward Browne (Wilkin, i., p. 337), also Appendix C.

I have endeavoured to reproduce as accurately as possible the text of the notes and letters, which, as will be seen from the example photographed for the frontispiece of this volume, was often very difficult to decipher. The originals of the notes and of seven of the nine letters to Merrett, as also the two letters in Appendix A., are in the Sloane Collection of MSS. in the British Museum Library; those numbered vii. and viii., as well as two letters in Appendix D., which have not hitherto been printed, are in the Bodleian Library; and the letter to Dugdale in Appendix B. is extracted from the "Eastern Counties Collectanea." All the MSS. in the Sloane Collection I have transcribed myself; of those in the Bodleian Library, No. vii. is from a photograph, the remainder were copied for me by a person recommended as being highly reliable. I thought it best to retain all the erasures and interlineations in order to show as much as possible what was passing in their author's mind: in the foot-notes I have sought to acknowledge in situ the valuable help I received from numerous correspondents to whom my best thanks are due, but I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Newton, at whose instigation the work was undertaken, for his kind assistance and for the loan of scarce books which it was necessary to consult in the interesting investigations needful to elucidate, if possible, some of the obscure passages in the text, a task in which if with the best intentions should I have sometimes failed, I must ask the reader's indulgence.

It may be truly said of Sir Thomas Browne that a prophet hath no honour in his own country; the writings of this remarkable man are little known in the city of his adoption, and a recent movement to erect a monument to his memory has hitherto met with feeble support.

T. S.

Norwich, December, 1901.

Notes and Letters

ON THE

Natural History of Norfolk.

NOTES[H] ON CERTAIN BIRDS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

[H] The heading adopted by Wilkin, for which I cannot find that he had any authority, is certainly misleading, for the brief and fragmentary notes which follow, although of great interest, can hardly be called "An Account of the Birds (or Fishes) found in Norfolk," as there are many species of each inhabiting or visiting the county which must have been well-known to Browne, but of which we find no mention.

[MSS. SLOAN. 1830. FOL. 5–19. AND 31.]

[The first four pages in the volume of Manuscript consist of two inserted letters from Merrett to Browne (see Appendix A.); these are on ordinary letter paper 6–¼ inches by 7 inches. The notes commence on folio 5 and are continued to folio 19; one leaf, containing an account of the Roller (numbered 31), is bound up with the notes on the Fishes, &c., which are numbered consecutively with the Birds; the paper of the volume is foolscap, 11–½ by 7–½ inches, and written, with a few exceptions, which appear to be subsequent additions, on the right-hand opening only. There are four folios after the Birds, the first of which is blank; the others, numbered 20, 21, and 22, contain rough memoranda on the Birds and Fishes, the substance of which is embodied in the other notes; the Fishes commence on folio 23. There are many erasures, interlineations, and substituted words which indicate hasty writing, and the alterations are not in all cases complete, thus rendering the sense occasionally obscure; these emendations I have thought it best to preserve as indicating the author's line of thought. In the foot-notes which follow I have endeavoured to identify the species treated of. This, notwithstanding the kind assistance of the friends whose help I gratefully acknowledge, I may not in all cases have successfully accomplished; the conclusions arrived at are occasionally only conjectural, and it may be that in some instances I have erred. Should such be the case I must plead in excuse the difficulty arising from vagueness of description, the frequent use of vernacular names which have long since become obsolete (see Note 22), and the imperfection of the record. This especially applies to the Marine Animals, and one of my correspondents rightly remarks that "the early accounts of marine beasts are so vague, and the figures (where referred to) so incomplete and often fanciful, that it is difficult even to make out the family, to say nothing of genera and species." Any assistance or correction in this respect would be gladly received by me.]

[Fol. 5.] I willingly obey your comands[1] in setting down such birds fishes & other animals wch for many years I have observed in Norfolk.