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.