Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk: More Especially on the Birds and FishesBrowne, Thomas, Sir
History
Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk: More Especially on the Birds and Fishes
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Natural history -- England -- Norfolk
_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.
[_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.
[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.
I send you also [_several words smeared out_] a little elegant sea
plant[114] 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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