tradescant] 
BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY 
585 
1791. A | Journal | kept in the | Isle of Man, | giving an account of the | 
Wind and Weather, and Daily Occurrences, | For upwards of 
Eleven Months : | with observations on the | Soil, Clime, and 
Natural Productions | of that Island. | [etc. 16 lines.] In Two 
Volumes | By Richard Townley, Esq. | Volume The First 
[Second]. Whitehaven : I Printed by J. Ware and son. I [etc. 
4 lines.] 1791. 
Collation — 2 vols. 8vo, vol. i. pp. xi un. +pp. xii-xvii + pp. 3 
un. +pp. 320. Vol. ii. pp. 4 un. +pp. 322. 
Birds, vol. i. at pp. 3, 4, 16, 19, 26, 53, 55, 56, 94, 104-5, 180-1, 
etc. etc., passing notes of no great importance. 
Tradescant (John, the Younger), ob. 1662 
In these days, when almost every town of any importance 
in this country boasts of a more or less well-equipped museum, 
it seems somewhat strange that the first English museum of 
which we have any detailed knowledge or printed account 
was formed less than two hundred and seventy years ago, 
and that it owed its inception, not to a native of these islands, 
but to the enterprise of a Hollander and his son who had 
settled in this country. This was the famous Tradescant 
Museum, an account of which was published in 1656, 1 but 
has now become very scarce in a complete state, partly 
owing to the fact of the portraits prefixed having been 
engraved by Hollar, and consequently being desiderata to 
the collector of prints. 
Of the two Tradescants but little is known, and that partly 
conjectural. John Tradescant the elder was, according to 
Anthony Wood, a Dutchman by birth, and seems to have 
settled in this country during the reign of James I. As a 
young man he is said to have travelled and collected in 
Europe and Asia, and to have accompanied a fleet which 
sailed against the Algerians in 1620, and some few years after 
this we find him settled at South Lambeth, where he had “ A 
1 Evelyn, the diarist, who knew the Tradescant Museum, also mentions, under 
date December 16, 1686, the “ Collection of varieties of Mr. Charleton in the Middle 
Temple . . . such as I had never seen in all my travels abroad, either of private 
gentlemen or princes.” This extensive collection had been gathered during many 
years’ travel in Europe, and must have been formed very shortly after the Tradescants’ 
collection, if it was not coseval with it. 
