360 AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM DR. THOMAS BROWNE. 
XIII. 
ON AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM 
DR. THOMAS BROWNE TO MR. WILLIAM DUGDALE. 
By Thomas Southwell, F.Z.S., Y.-P. 
Read 25tli February, 1902. 
The following letter, for a copy of which I am indebted to the 
kindness of Mr. Ellis H. Minns, the Librarian of Pembroke College, 
Cambridge, and which, although it has been referred to more than 
once,* has not, so far as I know, been published in extenso, is 
preserved in the Library of Pembroke, where it is numbered 104, 
in a bound volume of MSS. It is endorsed in an Eighteenth Century 
handwriting, which Mr. Minns suggests may be that of Thomas 
Browne, who was Master of Pembroke College from 1693 to 1706 : 
“ Letter of Sr Tho Browne of Norwich, an eminent Physitian & 
virtuoso” and is directed to “Mr. Wm. Dugdale at his Lodging 
at ye Seven Stars on ye North side of St Pauls Ch. Yard London” 
[“This was wrote in, or about 1660” added]. 
But first, to make the subject of the letter intelligible, I must 
mention that in October and November, 1658, Dugdale had been 
corresponding with Browne, relative to the bone of a “ fish which 
was taken up by Sir Robert Catton in digging a pond at the skirt 
of Connington downe,” and which bone he had sent to Browne 
asking him his opinion thereof.! After stating that he would first 
compare the bone with some other which was not then by him, 
Browne in a subsequent letter]; states that it is a vertebra of “some 
large fish and not of any terrestreous animal,” at the same time 
enumerating other instances of similar occurrences in apparently 
impossible situations, and giving his reasons for “not being ready 
* See Hist. MS. Commission, Pembroke Coll. Camb. vol. v. p. 487. 
Also ‘Excursions through the County of Norfolk 5 (1818), vol. i. p. 121. 
t ‘ Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, 5 Edited by 
Wm. Hamper. London MDCCCXXVII. pp. 337, 339, and 843. 
+ ‘Notes and Letters of Sir Thomas Browne on the Natural History of 
Norfolk. 5 T. Southwell, 1902, appendix p. 91. 
