200 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
47, Common Sandpiper. 
48. Kentish Plover. The description is probably intended 
for a Jack Snipe, but the picture represents a Kentish 
Plover. 
50. Dunlin. “ The young ones come to us in the month 
of September, many of which I shot” (MS8.). 
51. Water Pipit, or Meadow Pipit. 
52. Kingfisher. 
53. Pied Wagtail. 
54. Grey Wagtail. 
Dipper. No description in the London MS. 
Eider Duck. Do. do. 
Curlew. Do. do. 
With this the Birds end, and are followed, at all events 
in the London copy, by descriptions of forty species of fresh- 
water fish, with illustrations, as well as by about fifty-two 
mammals, insects and molluscs. 
1662. Str THomas BRowNE. 
In 1902 an excellent edition of Browne’s treatises on 
Birds and Fish was published, with notes by Thomas Southwell, 
assisted by Professor Newton,* but the complete edition of 
his works is that by Simon Wilkin.t| Among other topics 
on which Browne touches is the migration of birds, and here 
he is the first English writer to offer us anything definite. 
In the seventeenth century not very much was known about 
the movements of birds, indeed the majority of scientific men 
were still reluctant to abandon the theory of hibernation, 
one of the chief exponents of which had been Olaus Magnus, 
the Swede. Absurd as it now seems to us, it was not more 
so than a much later theory, viz., that birds migrated to 
the moon, an idea promulgated in all good faith in 1703 by 
F. Roberts, and subsequently by Charles Morton.t Browne 
knew very well that it was from oversea countries, and not 
from the moon, that birds came. Forced on his notice every 
autumn, far more in Norfolk than if he had lived in one of 
* “ Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk from the MSS. 
of Sir Thomas Browne.’’ Edited by Thomas Southwell, 1902. 
t Issued in 1835 in four volumes. 
t “ Harleian Miscellany,’ Vol. II., p. 578. 
