SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 207 
and examined the throat of the Onocrotylus, or pelican, a fowl 
between a stork anda swan ; a melancholy water-fowl, brought 
from Astracan by the Russian Ambassador ; it was diverting 
to see how he would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or 
flounder, to get it right into his gullet at its lower beak which, 
being filmy, stretches to a prodigious wideness, when it devours 
a great fish.” This was perhaps the same Pelican described 
by Ray and Willughby.* ‘‘ Here was also a small water-fowl, 
not bigger than a moorhen, that went almost quite erect, 
like the penguin of America [Great Auk]; it would eat as much 
fish as its whole body weighed; I never saw so unsatiable a 
devourer, yet the body did not appear to swell the bigger.” 
It was probably a Guillemot or Razorbill. Evelyn next goes 
.on to say something of the Scotch Solan Goose or Gannet : 
“The Solan Geese here are also great devourers, and are 
said soon to exhaust all the fish in a pond..... ee Des 
Edward Browne, who must have known his father’s friend, 
has something to tell us about St. James’s Park, in February, 
1664, one year earlier than Evelyn’s visit. “I saw many 
strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny 
sheep, a white raven, a great parrot, a storke, which having 
broke its own leg, had a wooden leg set on, . . . .”+ He does 
not allude to the Solan Geese mentioned by Evelyn. The 
collection was evidently quite considerable, judging from 
the preceding extracts, and also from some allusions to it in 
Charleton’s . ‘‘ Exercitationes de Differentiis et Nominibus 
Animalium” (1677). We have a reminiscence of it in the name 
Bird-Cage Walk. 
1666. CHRISTOPHER MERRETT. 
3 
In the ‘‘Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum,” of 
Dr. C. Merrett, we are in possession of the earliest printed 
catalogue of English birds, although it only extends to 
fifteen pages, and the information afforded is rather poor, 
neither has much attempt been made at classification, which, 
joined to one or two avoidable mistakes in the text, probably 
induced Ray to condemn the production as Merrett’s bungling 
Pinax. The life and labours of Christopher Merrett have been 
* “ The Ornithology,” p. 327. 
+ Browne’s “ Works,”’ edited by Wilkin, Vol. I., p. 50. 
