84 LETTERS TO MERRETT. 



answereth their descriptions exactly butt [i.e., except] 

 only in the colour of their leggs & feet. 



Haue you a willock a sea fowl like a rook or crowe.^^ 



No. IX. 

 [miscellaneous papers. MS. SLOANE 1 847, 



roL. 182.] 



[Fol. 182.] Sr I craue your pardon that I haue no 

 sooner sent unto you. I shall be very reddie to do you 

 service in order to your desires And shall endeavour to 

 procure you such animalls as I haue formerly met with 

 & any other not ordinary wch [shall crossed out] are to 

 bee acquired, though many of my old assistants are 

 dead. & sometimes they fell upon animalls, [not to bee 

 crossed out] scarce to bee met with agayne. I wish I 

 had been acquainted with your desires 3 yeares ago. 

 for I had about fortie hanging up in my howse. wch 

 the plague being at the next doores the person intrusted 

 in my howse, burnt or threw away. The figure of the 

 weasell Cray [see Note 60 and p. 82] was in a long paper 

 pasted together at the ends & I make no question you 

 will find it otherwise I would send another [the willick 

 wee in crossed out] that fowl wch some call willick, [see 



who refers to it under the name of Anas platyrhincus describes it fairly 

 well (p. 145). Clangula ab alarum clangore, Aldrov., i.e., " Rattlewings," 

 an old name by which the Golden-eye was known to the Norfolk gunners. 

 ^^ A local name for the Guillemot. Merrett says, in a letter dated 

 8th May, 1669, "The Clangula I know no more of than reading hath 

 informed mee ;[j««A'i!/« 127] a willock I have seen brought from Greenland,* 

 where they are said exceedingly to abound, but never thought either of 

 them was found in England, and having not taken sufficient notice of the 

 latter, crave your description of both." 



* The Greenland of those days was Spitsbergen, where they would be met with by 

 the Whalers, but in that case the bird would he Briinnich's Guillemot, a species not then 

 differentiated. 



