No. VIII 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 KomornR in Lower Hungary and hee was then going to the mine countryes. I think the Rowd may bee calld Rutilus ventre magis compresso122 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 maketh125 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 pristis126 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.
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 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.
Haue you a willock a sea fowl like a rook or crowe.128
Notes
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.
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.
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.
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