Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk

No. IV “The Fourth Letter to Dr. Merrett Decemb XXIX”

[Fol. 42 verso.] Sr I am very joyfull that you haue recouered your health whereof I heartily wish the continuation for your own and the publick good. And I humbly thank you for the courteous present of your booke.111 with much delight and satisfaction I had read the same not once in English I must needs acknowledge your com̄ent more acceptable to me then the text which I am sure is an hard obscure peice without it. though I haue not been a stranger unto the vitriarie Art both in England and abroad.

I perceiue you haue proceeded farre in your Pinax. These few at present I am bold to propose & hint unto you intending God willing to salute you agayne.

A paragraph might probably be annexed unto Quercus. Though wee haue not all the exotick oakes, nor their excretions yet these and probably more supercrescences productions or excretions may bee obserued in England.

Viscum—polypodium—Juli pilulæ—

Gemmæ foraminatæ [formicatæ?] foliorū—

excrementū fungosum verticibus scatens—

Excrementum Lanatum—

Capitula squamosa jacææ æmula.

Nodi—melleus Liquor—Tubera radicum vermibus scatentia—Muscus—Lichen—

Fungus—varæ quercinæ.112

[Fol. 43.] Capillaris marina sparsa fucus capillaris marinus sparsus sive capillitius marinus or sea periwigge.113 strings of this are often found on the sea shoare. but this is the full figure I haue seen 3 times as large.

I send you also [several words smeared out] a little elegant sea plant114 which I pulled from a greater bush thereof which I haue resembling the back bone of a fish. Fucus marinus vertebratus pisciculi spinum referens Icthyorachius or what you thinck fitt.

And though perhaps it bee not worth the taking notice of formicæ arenariæ marinæ or at least muscus formicarius marinus115 yet I obserue great numbers by the seashoare and at yarmouth an open sandy coast, in a sunny day many large and winged ones may bee obserued upon & rising out of the [shoare crossed out] wet sands when the tide falls away.

Notonecton an insect that swimmeth on its back [see Note 98] & mentioned by Muffettus may be obserued with us.

I send you a white Reed chock116 by name some kind of Junco or litle sort thereof I haue had another very white when fresh.

Also the draught of a sea fowle called a sherewater [see Note 17] billed like a cormorant, feirce & snapping like it upon any touch. I kept 2 of them aliue 5 weekes cramming them with fish refusing of themselues to feed on anything & wearied with cramming them they liued 17 dayes without food. They often fly about fishing [ves crossed out] shipps when they cleans their fish & throwe away the offell. so that it may bee referred to the Lari as Larus niger gutture albido rostro adunco.

Gossander videtur esse puphini species [Pinax, p. 184]. worthy Sr that wch we call a gossander [see Note 19] & is no rare fowle among us is a large well colourd & marked diuing fowle most answering the [mer crossed out] Merganser. it may bee like the puffin in fattnesse and [Ranknesse crossed out] Ranknesse butt no fowle is I think like the puffin differenced from all others by a peculiar kind of bill

[Fol 43 verso.] Barganders [see Note 18] not so rare as Turn [Turner] makes them comm̄on in Norfolk so abounding in vast & spatious warrens.

If you haue not yet putt in Larus minor or a sterne [see Note 13] it would not bee omitted, comm̄on about broad waters and plashes not farre from the sea.

Haue you a Yarwhelp, Barker, or Latrator [see Note 39] a marsh bird about the bignesse of a Godwitt

Haue you Dentalia [see Note 83] which are small vniualue testacea whereof sometimes wee find some on the seashoare

Haue you putt in nerites another little Testaceum which wee haue [see Note 83].

Haue you an Apiaster a small bird calld a Beebird.117

Haue you morinellus marinus or the sea Dotterell better colourd then the other & somewhat lesse [see Note 28].

I send you a draught of 2 small birds the bigger called a Chipper or Betulæ Carptor [see Note 48] cropping the first sproutings of the Birch trees & comes early in the spring. The other a very small bird lesse than the certhya or ox eyecreeper called a whinne bird

I send you the draught of a fish taken sometimes in our seas [see Note 69]. pray compare it with Draco minor Johnstoni. this draught was taken from the fish dried & so the prickly finnes less discernible.

There is a very small kind of smelt [see Note 71] butt in shape & smell like the other taken in good plenty about [wh crossed out] Lynne & called Primmes.

Though Scombri Or Makerells [see Note 73] bee a com̄on fish yet [in crossed out] our seas afford sometimes strange & large ones as I haue heard from fishermen & others. & this yeare 1668 one was taken at Lestoffe an ell long by measure & presented to a Gentleman a friend of myne.

Musca Tuliparum moschata is a small beelike flye [see Note 108] of an excellent fragrant odour which I haue often found at the bottom of the flowers of Tuleps.

[Fol. 44.] In the little box I send a peece of vesicaria or seminaria marina [yo crossed out] cutt of from a good full one found on the sea shoare [see Note 91].

Wee haue [two or three words smeared out here] also an eiectment of the sea very com̄on which is fanago [see Note 91] whereof some very large.

I thank you for communicating the account of Thunder & lightening some strange effects thereof I haue found heere butt this last yeere wee had litle or no Thunder & lightening. [No signature.]

Notes

111 This evidently refers to the gift of a copy of Merrett’s Latin translation of Antonio Neri’s L’Arte Vetraria (Firenze, 1612, 4to), published under the title of “The Art of Glass, translated into English with some observations on the Author,” &c., in 1662, and a Latin edition in 1668.

112 The Rev. E. N. Bloomfield has most kindly assisted me in attempting to identify the Parasitic products of the Oak mentioned above:
Viscum, is doubtless the Mistletoe.
Polypodium, the Common Polypody Fern.
Juli pilulæ: “little balls on the flower catkins.” The Currant Gall, Neurosterus baccarum, which is the spring form of N. lenticularis; Oliv.
Gemmæ foraminatæ [formicatæ?] foliorum: “pimple-like buds on the leaves.” Leaf-galls, such as the Silky Button, N. numismatis, Oliv., and the common Spangle, N. lenticularus, Oliv.
Excrementum fungosum verticibus scatens: “a spongy secretion bursting out from the ends of the shoots.” The Oak Apple, Biorhiza terminalis, Fab.
Excrementum lanatum: the Woolly Gall, Andricus ramuli, L., a somewhat rare Gall, resembling a ball of cotton-wool.
Capitula squamosa jacææ æmula: “little scaley (or imbricated) heads resembling the heads of Jacea” (Black Knapweed). The Artichoke Gall. Andricus fecundatrix; Htg.
Nodi: probably swellings of any sort, whether caused by insects or not.
Melleus liquor: Honey-dew, a secretion of Aphides.
Tubera radicum vermibus scatentia: “swollen tubers on the roots containing grubs;” without doubt the Root-Gall, Andricus radicis, Fab. Polythalamous Galls, often very large at the roots or on the trunk near the ground.
Mosses, Lichens, and Fungi, all “genuine products of the Oak,” need no comment, but Mr. Bloomfield remarks, “How wonderfully observant Sir Thomas Browne must have been thus to distinguish the various galls, &c., and to point them out so distinctly.”
Browne’s contemporary, Dean Wren, seems sadly to have misunderstood the fructification of the Oak. In a note on Browne’s remarks on the “Miseltoe” (Pseudodoxia, book ii., chap. vi.), he says, “Arboreous excrescences of the Oak are soe many as may raise the greatest wonder. Besides the gall, which is his proper fruite, hee shootes out oakerns, i.e., ut nunc vocamus (acornes), and oakes apples, and polypodye, and moss; five several sorts of excrescences.” See also letter to his son, Dr. Edward Browne, in which Sir Thomas Browne says that “wee haue little or none of viscus quercinus, or miselto of the oake, in this country; butt I beleeve they have in the woods and parks of Oxfordshyre.”—Wilkin, i, p. 279.

113 In Sir Thomas Browne’s time the Hydrozoa were not distinguished from the Corallines, and both were regarded as vegetable growths. It is almost impossible to determine from his vague descriptions even to which section those mentioned belong, but although our exposed coast-line is not favourable to such growths, there are a few common species of Hydroid Zoophytes which abound here, and to these, fortunately, Browne’s specimens appear to belong. What he calls the “Sea-perriwig” is doubtless Sertularia operculata, Lin., sometimes known as “Sea-hair,” a very common and widely dispersed species.

114 The little “Fucus,” which he compares to the backbone of a fish, is probably Halecium halecinum, Lin., the “Herring-bone Coral” of Ellis, one of the most common Zoophytes on our coast. The “Abies,” of which he suggests at p. 75 that this may be a “difference,” is most likely Sertularia abietina, Lin., which this species resembles, but is less regularly pinnate; this may have led him to suppose that the “sprouts, wings, or leaves” may have fallen off. The Fucus marinus is most likely Fucus serratus.

115 Swarms of Ants and Flies are no uncommon sight along the seashore at certain seasons of the year, and under the conditions which Browne describes. The Pagets (“Nat. Hist. of Great Yarmouth”) mention that the fly, Actora æstuum, is common on the beach at high-water mark; but Mr. Verrall writes me that there are many others likely to be thus met with, such as Orygma luctuosa and Limosina zosteræ, widely divergent species. In his “Journal of a Tour” into Derbyshire, Dr. Edward Browne, in crossing the sands of the Wash, mentions his satisfaction at the absence of the swarms of flies “with which all the fenne countrys are extremely pestered.” See also Note 110 supra.

116 It is impossible to form an idea as to what is here intended. I know of no Juncus which would answer the description. Professor Newton reminds me that “Junco” was a common name for “a bird that inhabited reeds,” and was loosely applied, some old authors taking it to be the Reed Thrush (i.e., the Great Reed-Warbler of these days), and others, the Reed-Sparrow or Bunting. But bearing in mind Browne’s practice of referring to Jonston, it seems possible that the latter’s Junco may be here intended, and that, as the figure (pl. 53) shows, is a small Sandpiper, almost certainly the Dunlin. It is lettered “Junco Bellonii,” but this he must have taken second-hand from Aldrovandus, since Belon never used the word “Junco” in this connexion, but called it “Schœniclus” or “Alouette-de-mer”—terms rendered Junco by Aldrovandus (iii. p. 487). Charleton took the same view in his “Onomasticon” (p. 108), published in 1668 (the year assigned as that of this letter), stating that it was so-called because “in juncis libenter degat,” and identifying it with the Alouette-de-mer of the French, and the English “Stint, or Sparr, or Perr.” Gilbert White appears to have thus applied the term (cf. “Life” by Rashleigh Holt-White, i. pp. 186, 194, 250). In one place he says, “No. five is Ray’s Junco and the Turdus arundinaceus of Linn.” That “Junco” is the name of a bird is absolutely certain, but the context, “very white when fresh,” does not seem to admit of explanation.

117 Probably the Spotted Flycatcher is here referred to, the prefix not being used in a technical sense; it is known here as the Beam-bird, either of which names may be a corruption of the other. Another Norfolk name for this bird is the Wall-bird.