362 AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM DR. THOMAS BROWNE. 
although it does not throw any light upon the supposed “ fish ” 
bones. 
Hooke writes : “the Royal Society received a memorable Account 
from the Learned Dr Brown concerning a Petrified Bone of 
a prodigious bigness discover’d by the falling of some cliffs; the 
words of the Relation are these. ‘ This Bone ’ (which he presented 
to the Royal Society, and is now in the Repository) was found last 
year 1666. on the Sea Shore, not far from W interton in Norfolk; 
it was found near the Clift after two great Floods, some thousand 
Loads of Earth being broken down by the rage of the Sea, as it 
often happens upon this Coast, where the Cliffs consist not of Rock 
but of Earth. That it came not out of the Sea may be conjectur’d 
because it was found near the Cliff, & by the color of it, for if out 
of the Sea it would have been whiter. Upon the same Coast, but 
as I take it, nearer Hasborough, divers great Bones are said to have 
been found, & I have seen a lower Jaw containing Teeth of a pro- 
digious bigness & somewhat petrified. All that have been found 
on this Coast have been found after the falling of some Cliff, where 
the outward Crust is fallen off, it clearly resembles the Bones of 
Whales & great Cetaceous Animals, comparing it with the Skull & 
Bones of a Whale which was cast upon the Coast near Wells, & 
which I have by me, the weight whereof is 55 Pounds.’” 
Mr. Reid can find no reference to this letter in the Phil. Trans, 
but suggests that as Hooke held some official position in the Royal 
Society in 1667, the communication may have been addressed to 
him personally ; nor does he find any reference to the specimen in 
Birch’s History of the Royal Society, nor in Grews 1 Catalogue.’ 
The Whale mentioned by way of comparison in this letter is 
doubtless one referred to by Browne in a letter to Dugdale (see 
Notes on the Nat. Hist, of Norf. p. 92), which he says was 62 feet 
in length, and came ashore at Wells about the year 1652. 
So long ago as the year 1746, our fellow citizen William Arderon 
contributed a paper to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans, vol. xliv. pt. L, 
No. 481, p. 275), in which he described the “dreadful heights” on 
the north-east sea coast of Norfolk, which were constantly falling, 
only to be washed away by the billows, and mentions the “ roots & 
trunks of trees which are to be seen at low water in several places 
near Hasborough and Walket” where “bones of animals are often 
to be found ; ” and the compiler of the ‘ Excursions through the 
