Chapter VIII: Appendix: B

[MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. MS. SLOANE 1847, FOL. 56-57.]

[_See Note 51_, p. 32 _supra_.]

Praye Request Mr. Johnson to obtayne this fauor of Mr. Bacon who is unknown to mee, to afford mee his resolution to these few queries concerning the whale [wch _crossed out_] whereof I understand he had the cutting up and disposure whether there were any spermacetie found, or made out of other parts beside the head; if soe, of what parts & out of what most: and whether any out of the meere fleshie parts whether that wch runne from it about the shoare came out of the mouth.

[_Not signed or dated._]

REPLY.

Sr in Answer to your questions conserninge the whale, I founde noe Sper[=m]e but in his heade and that after I had taken off his scalpe one tonn weight [or more _written above_] of a nexuous substance, we found in the circumference as large as a small coach wheele in the middle part certain round pieces of Sperm as bigge as a mans fist some as large as eggs and on the out side of the said rounds, flakes as large as a mans head in forme like hony combs being very white and full of oyle. And that Sp. wch was cast upon the shore I doe conceive came out of his nostrells. thus much ffrom him who doth remayne Sir your humble Servant, Arthur Bacon Yarmouth 10th May 1652.

BROWNE TO DUGDALE ON CERTAIN FOSSIL BONES.

["EASTERN COUNTIES COLLECTANEA," pp. 193-195].

The letter referred to in the foot-note on page 33, written by
Sir Thomas Browne to Dugdale, and formerly in the possession of
the late Mr. Arthur Preston of Norwich, whose collection of
manuscripts was dispersed by auction in August, 1888, was
printed in a brief-lived and little-known local publication,
entitled the "Eastern Counties Collectanea" (1872-3), at page
193. In this letter occurs a passage which confirms the doubt
expressed as to the Whales which had young ones after coming on
shore at Hunstanton being Sperm Whales. They are expressly said
to have been of that sort "which seamen call a Grampus," and as
Sir Nicholas le Strange, in a MS. preserved in the Muniment room
at Hunstanton, applies the name "Grampus" to an undoubted
specimen of _Hyperoodon rostratus_ (as shown both by his
description and outline sketch) which came ashore there in the
year 1700, I have little doubt that the Cetaceans in question
belonged to that species and not to _Physeter macrocephalus_.

This letter is interesting also as filling a gap in Wilkin's
series and I therefore reproduce it, omitting only occasional
learned digressions which do not affect the subject. The
original not being available, I have used the copy in the
"Collectanea" before mentioned.

Dugdale, in November, 1658, and again later, had written to
Browne, sending him a bone of a "fish which was taken up by Sir
Robert Cotton, in digging a pond at the skirt of Conington
downe," and asking his opinion thereof. (Wilkin, i., pp. 385 and
390.)

To the first of these letters Browne replied, under date of the
6th December, 1658, "I receaued the bone of the fish, and shall
giue you some account of it when I have compared it with
another bone which is not by mee" (op. cit. p. 387). The letter
which follows and which was unknown to Wilkin supplies this
information.

[p. 193.] "Sr I cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious industry of Sr Robert Cotton in preserving so many things of rarity and observation nor commend your own enquiries for the satisfaction of such particulars. The petrified bone you sent me, which with divers others was found underground, near Cunnington, seems to be the vertebra, spondyle or rackbone of some large fish, and no terrestrious animal as some upon sight conceived, as either of Camel, rhinoceros, or elephant, for it is not perforated and hollow but solid according to the spine of fishes in whom the spinal marrow runs in a channel above these solid racks, or spondiles.

"It seems much too big for the largest Dolphins, porpoises, or sword fishes, and too little for a true or grown whale, but may be the bone of some big cetaceous animal, as particularly of that which seamen call a Grampus; a kind of small whale, whereof some come short, some exceed twenty foot. And not only whales but Grampusses have been taken in this Estuarie or mouth of the fenland rivers. And about twenty years ago four were run ashore near Hunstanton and two had young ones after they came to land. But whether this fish were of the longitude of twenty foot (as is conceived) some doubt may be made for this bone containeth little more than an inch in thickness, and not three inches in breadth so that it might have a greater number thereof than is easily allowable to make out that longitude. For of the whale which was cast upon our coast about six years ago a vertebra or rackbone still preserved, containeth a foot in breadth and nine inches in depth, yet the whale with all advantages but sixty-two foot in length. [p, 194.] We are not ready to believe that, wherever such relics of fish or sea animals are found, the sea hath had its course. And Goropius Becanus[131] long ago could not digest that conceit when he found great numbers of shells upon the highest Alps. For many may be brought unto places where they were not first found.

[131] This seems to refer to the "De Gigantibus eorumque reliquiis" of J. van Gorp, Jean Becan, or Joannes Goropius (as the name is variously given in the "Biographie Universelle" (b. 1518, d. 1572), and apparently published after the Author's death by Jean Chassanion, 8vo, Basileae, 1580, and another edition in 1587. See Brit. Mus. Cat.; but I have not seen the book.

"Some bones of our whale were left in several fields which when the earth hath obscured them, may deceive some hereafter, that the sea hath come so high. In northern nations where men live in houses of fishbones and in the land of the Icthiophagi near the Red sea where mortars were made of the backbones of whales, doors of their jaws, and arches of their ribs, when time hath covered them they might confound after discoverers....

"For many years great doubt was made concerning those large bones found in some parts of England, and named Giants' bones till men [p. 195] considered they might be the bones of elephants brought into this island by Claudius, and perhaps also by some succeeding emperors [then follow other ancient examples of the finding 'elephants bones' in various countries attributed to similar modes of introduction]. But many things prove obscure in subterraneous discovery....

"In some chalk pits about Norwich many stag's horns are found of large beams and branches, the solid parts converted into a chalky and fragile substance, the pithy part sometimes hollow and full of brittle earth and clay. In a churchyard of this city an oaken billet was found in a coffin. About five years ago an humourous man of this country after his death and according to his own desire was wrap't up in a horned hide of an ox and so buried.[T] Now when the memory hereof is past how this may hereafter confound the discoverers and what connjectures will arise thereof it is not easy to conjecture.

[T] Richard Ferrer, of Thurne, by his will, proved about 1654, directed that his "dead body be handsomely trussed up in a black bullock's hide, and be decently buried in the Churchyard of Thurne."--"Norfolk Archaeology," v., p. 212.

Sr Your servant to my power,

THO. BROWNE."

This is endorsed "Sr Thomas Browne's discourse about the Fish bone found at Conington Com. Hunt, Shown, Dr. Tanner."

APPENDIX C.

[SLOANE MS. ADDITIONAL 5233, LARGE FOLIO, IS A VOLUME LABELLED "DR. EDW. BROWN'S DRAWINGS."]

"Some original drawing of Towns, Castles, Antiquities, Medals
&c. by Dr. Edward Browne in his Travels & presented by his
Father Sir Thomas Browne. Who hath write upon sev^{ll} of them
what they are."

The above is the inscription written on the fly-leaf of this volume, which I hoped might have contained some drawings of birds or fishes by Sir Thomas Browne, but there is nothing in it of interest from a Natural History point of view. In Wilkin's Catalogue of the MSS. (Vol. iv., p. 476) it is described as "a collection of very curious drawings (some coloured) of public buildings, habits, _fishes_, mines, rocks, tombs, and other antiquities, observed by Sir Thos. and Dr. Edward Browne in their travels," but there are no fishes, birds, or other animals in the volume.