LETTERS TO MERRETT. 75 



saw fire-balls fly & go of when they met with resistance, 

 and one carried away the tiles and boards of a leucomb 

 Window of my owne howse, being higher then the 

 neighbour howses & breaking agaynst it with a report 

 like a good canon. I set downe that occurrence in this 

 citty & country, & haue it somewhere [in crossed out] 

 amongst my papers, and fragments of a woman's hat 

 that was shiuered into pieces of the bignesse of a groat. 

 I haue still by mee a little of the spermaceti of our 

 whale, as also the oyle & balsome wch I made with the 

 oyle & spermaceti. Our whale was worth 500 lib. my 

 Apothecarie got about fiftie pounds in one sale of a 

 quantitie of sperm \see Note 51]. 



I made enumeration of the excretions of the oake 

 which might bee obserued in england [see Note 112], 

 because I conceived they would bee most obseruable if 

 you set them downe together, not minding whether there 

 were any addition by excrementum fungosum vermicu- 

 lis scatens I only meant an vsuall excretion, soft & 

 fungous at first & pale & sometimes couered in part with 

 a fresh red growing close vnto the sprouts, first full of 

 maggots in little woodden cells which afterwards turne 

 into little reddish browne or bay flies, of the tubera 

 indica vermiculis scatentia I send you a peece, they are 

 as bigg as good Tennis-balls & ligneous. 



The little elegant fucus [see Note 114] may come in as 

 a difference of the abies, being somewhat like it, as also 

 unto the 4 corrallium in Gerard of the sprouts whereof I 

 could never find any sprouts wings or leaves as in the 

 abies whether fallen of I knowe not, though I call'd it 

 icthyorachius or pisciculi spinam referens yet pray do you 

 call it how you please I send you now the figure of a 

 quercus mar. [inus] or alga which I found by the sea- 

 shoare differing from the comon [^see Note 114] as being 

 denticulated & in one place there seemes to bee the 

 beginning of some flower pod or seedvessell. 



