Description of the Tradescant collection by German traveller G. Christof Stirn, 1638:

In the art museum of Mr. John Tradescant [are] the following things first in the courtyard [p. 495] there lie two ribs of a whale, also a very ingenious little boat of bark; then in the garden all kinds of foreign plants, which are to be found [enumerated] in a special little book which Mr. Tradescant has had printed about them. In the museum itself we saw a salamander, a chameleon, a pelican, a remora, a lanhado from Africa, a white partridge, a goose which has grown in Scotland on a tree, a flying squirrel, another squirrel like a fish, all kinds of bright coloured birds [p. 496] from India, a number of things changed into stone, amongst others a piece of human flesh on a bone, gourds, olives, a piece of wood, an ape's head, a cheese etc; all kinds of shells, the hand of a mermaid, the hand of a mummy, a very natural wax hand under glass, all kinds of precious stones , coins, a picture wrought in feathers, a small piece of wood from the cross of Christ , pictures in perspective of Henry IV and Louis XIII of France, who are shown, as in nature, on a polished steel mirror, when [p. 497] this is held against the middle of the picture, a little box in which a landscape is seen in perspective, pictures from the church of S. Sophia in Constantinople copied by a Jew into a book, two cups of 'rinocerode' (the horn of the quadruped, or the beak of the hornbill ?) a cup of an East Indian alcedo which is a kind of unicorn, many Turkish and other foreign shoes and boots, a sea parrot, a toad-fish, an elk's hoof with three claws, a bat as  large as a pigeon, a human bone weighing 42 pounds, Indian [p. 498] arrows, an elephant's head, a tiger's head, poisoned arrows such as are used by the executioners in the West Indies — when a man is condemned to death, they lay open his back with them and he dies of it — an instrument used by the Jews in circumcision (with picture) [p. 499] some very light wood from Africa, the robe of the king of Virginia, a few goblets of agate, a girdle such as the Turks wear in Jerusalem, [a representation of ] the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone, a large magnet stone, [a figure of] S. Francis in wax under glass as also of S. Jerome, the Pater Noster of Pope Gregory XV., pipes from the East and West Indies, a stone found in the West Indies in the water, whereon were graven Jesus, Mary and Joseph, [p. 500] a beautiful present from the Duke of Buckingham, which was of gold and diamonds affixed to a feather by which the four elements were signified, Isidor's MS. of de natura hominis, a scourge with which Charles V. is said to have scourged himself, a hat band of snake bones. (transl. from Hager, “review of K. H. Schaible, Geschichte der Deutschen in England. Strassburg: Trübner, 1885 with appendix,” 450-1).