SIR THOMAS BROWNE AS A NATURALIST. 
75 
In 1653 — 4 Sir Ilamon le Strange, of Hunstanton, sent Browne 
eighty-five pages of MS. Observations of the ‘ Vulgar Errors ’ 
(preserved in Sloano MS.) (Diet, of Nat. Biog.). 
The Third Book of * Vulgar Errors ’ deals with “ Popular and 
received tenets concerning animals.” Many of these tenets seem to 
us to be too ridiculous to discuss, which may possibly, in the future, 
be the view taken by posterity of some of our present day 
discussions. However absurd some of the tenets appear to us now, 
we cannot help being struck with the interesting way in which 
Sir Thomas Browne discusses them, bringing all his erudition to 
bear on even the most insignificant, examining carefully the pros 
and cons of each. 
For instance, in arguing about the existence of the Basilisk, 
which it was supposed by some, “ poisoneth by the eye,” he says 
that “this way a Basilisk may empoison” .... “is not 
a thing impossible.” And his reason for thinking so is, “that the 
visible species of things strike not our senses immaterially, but 
streaming in corporeal rays, do carry with them the qualities of the 
object from which they flow, and the medium through which they 
pass.” We have here very clearly put the old corpuscular theory 
of light, which was eventually superseded by the undulatory 
theory. From the amount of space devoted by Browne in his 
essays to the Basilisk, the Griffin, and the Phoenix, we are forced 
to conclude that these myths occupied an important position in the 
imaginations of people in those times. 
On reading the account of Frogs, Toads, and Toad-stone, one 
cannot help being struck on finding that Browne believed in two 
separate modes of reproduction in the Frog. He had tried the 
experiment of incubating ordinary frog-spawn in a glass, and gives 
a fair account of the gradual development into the Tadpole, and 
finally into the Frog. At the same time, he held that the Common 
Frog and the Tree Frog arose from putrefaction, and that the first- 
named was called, specifically, teinporaria, because it subsisted not 
long. We are not surprised to find that people believed then that 
Moles were blind, and that Lampreys had many eyes, but we now 
call these eyes bronchial apertures. 
In arguing against the opinion that “ the Chameleon lives only 
upon air,” he endeavours to show the impossibility of any being 
existing upon air alone, and in his attempt to show this, he states 
