Camden [_smear_] reports that in former time there haue been [otters _crossed out_] Beuers in the Riuer of Cardigan in wales. this wee are to sure of that the Riuers great Broads & carres afford great store of otters with us, a [des _crossed out_] great destroyer of fish as feeding butt from ye vent downewards. [a prey _crossed out_] not free from being a prey it self for their yong ones haue been found in Buzzards nests. they are accounted no bad dish by many are to bee made very tame and in some howses haue [semed _crossed out_] serued for turnespitts. [Blank space.] NOTE.--Although Browne's account of the Fishes is doubtless derived from his personal observation, I have found it very difficult in some families, such as the Cods, Rays, Gurnards, Flat-fishes, and Gobies to identify them with the species as at present known; in fact, they were at that time very imperfectly differentiated, and the figures in the old authors are generally so inexact as not to be recognisable. Ray, in 1674 ("English Words not generally known," p. 101), thus writes of the sea fishes, "several of them, we judge, not yet described by any Author extant in print: indeed the writers of Natural History of Animals living far from the Ocean, and so having never had opportunity of seeing these kind of fishes ... write very confusedly and obscurely concerning them," a remark which I have found abundantly verified. LETTERS TO MERRETT. [MS. SLOANE. 1833. FOL. 14.] No. 1. "_My father to Dr. Meret July 13, 1668._" Most honourd Sir,