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]