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of Browne, whose liberal response is evidenced in the [drafts of the] letters still fortunately extant, but either superseded by the more learned labours of Willughby and Ray, or laid aside on account of the perplexities in which Merrett became involved with the College of Physicians,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