The Digital Ark: Early Modern Collections of Curiosities in England and Scotland, 1580-1700

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a gentleman (fl. 1668 - )

Relationships: a gentleman was a friend of Thomas Browne (19 Nov 1605-19 Oct 1682)

References in Documents:
Objects mentioned in correspondence

I send you the draught of a fish taken some times in our seas. Pray compare it with draco minor Johnstoni. This draught was taken from the fish dried, and so the prickly fins less discernible. There is a very small kind of smelt; but in shape and smell like the other, taken in good plenty about Lynn, and called prims. Though scombri or mackerell be a common fish, yet our seas afford sometimes strange large ones, as I have heard from fishermen and others; and this year, 1668, one was taken at Leostoffe, an ell long by measure, and presented to a gentleman, a friend of mine. Musca tuliparum moschata is a small bee-like fly, of an excellent fragrant odour, which I have often found at the bottom of the flowers of tulips. In the little box I send a piece of vesicaria or seminaria marina cut off from a good full one, found on the sea-shore. We have also an ejectment of the sea, very common, which is funago, whereof some very large. I thank you for communicating the account of thunder and lightning; some strange effects thereof I have found here; but this last year we had little or no thunder or lightning.