FOUND IN NORFOLK. 21 



varietie of colours euery one therein somewhat varying 

 from other. The female is called a Reeve without any 

 ruffe about the neck, lesser then the other & hardly to 

 bee got. They are almost all cocks & putt together fight 

 & destroy each other. & prepare themselues to fight like 

 cocks though they seeme to haue no other offensive part 

 butt the bill, they loose theire Ruffes about the Autumne 

 or beginning of winter as wee haue obserued [they 

 struck oui\ keeping them in a garden from may till the 

 next spring, they most abound in Marshland butt are 

 also in good number in the marshes between norwich 

 & yarmouth. 



Of picus martius^^ or woodspeck many kinds. The 

 green the Red the Leucomelanus or neatly marked [red 

 crossed oui\ black & white & the cinereus or dunne calld 

 [a re struck out] little [bird calld written above] a 

 nuthack. remarkable in the larger are the hardnesse of 

 the bill & skull & the long nerues wch tend vnto the 

 tongue whereby it strecheth out the tongue aboue an 

 inch out of the mouth & so [lik crossed out] licks up 

 insecks. they make the holes in trees without any 

 consideration of the winds or quarters of heauen butt as 

 the rottenesse thereof best affordeth conuenience. 



'2 Picus martius is here used, as it is by Sibbald, and all preceding 

 writers, in a general sense for all birds commonly called " Woodpeckers," 

 and does not imply that the Great Black Woodpecker (Picus niger 7tiaxi- 

 mus, of Ray's Synopsis), to which species the name was restricted by 

 Linnaeus, is found here, and Browne goes on to mention the three British 

 Woodpeckers, the Green, the Red, by which the Great Spotted Wood- 

 pecker is intended, and the Leucomelanus, or Lesser-spotted Woodpecker. 

 He also includes the Nuthatch, which was at that time (as well as the 

 Wryneck) called a "Woodpecker." In this passage Browne, in making 

 a correction, does not seem to have proceeded far enough, the word which 

 Wilkin has rendered "dun-coloured," is certainly " dunne calld "in the 

 MS. ; but there are two alterations in the passage, and there is little doubt 

 that he intended to write "dunne cuU'd" (or coloured), which would make 

 it read as Wilkin has printed it. The use of the word " nerve," for tendon 

 or ligament, was in accordance with the phraseology of the time. 



