Haue you had the duck called Clangula in Ald. [drovandus] & Johnst.[127] wee haue one heere w^{ ch} answereth their descriptions exactly butt [_i.e._, except] only in the colour of their leggs & feet.
[127] Aldrovandus's figure of "Clangula" (head only, iii., p. 224) is too indefinite for determination. He says the feet are yellow, but Jonston, who refers to it under the name of _Anas platyrhincus_ describes it fairly well (p. 145). _Clangula ab alarum clangore_, Aldrov., _i.e._, "Rattlewings," an old name by which the Golden-eye was known to the Norfolk gunners.
Haue you a willock a sea fowl like a rook or crowe.[128]
[128] A local name for the Guillemot. Merrett says, in a letter dated 8th May, 1669, "The Clangula I know no more of than reading hath informed mee; [_see Note 127_] a willock I have seen brought from Greenland,[S] where they are said exceedingly to abound, but never thought either of them was found in England, and having not taken sufficient notice of the latter, crave your description of both."
[S] The Greenland of those days was Spitsbergen, where they would be met with by the Whalers, but in that case the bird would be Brünnich's Guillemot, a species not then differentiated.
[MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. MS. SLOANE 1847, FOL. 182.]
[_Fol. 182._] Sr I craue your pardon that I haue no sooner sent unto you. I shall be very reddie to do you service in order to your desires And shall endeavour to procure you such animalls as I haue formerly met with & any other not ordinary wch [shall _crossed out_] are to bee acquired. though many of my old assistants are dead. & sometimes they fell upon animalls, [not to bee _crossed out_] scarce to bee met with agayne. I wish I had been acquainted with your desires 3 yeares ago. for I had about fortie hanging up in my howse. wch the plague being at the next doores the person intrusted in my howse, burnt or threw away. The figure of the weasell Cray [_see Note 60_ and p. 82] was in a long paper pasted together at the ends & I make no question you will find it otherwise I would send another [the willick wee in _crossed out_] that fowl wch some call willick, [_see Note 128_] wee meet with sometimes. The last I met with was taken on the sea shoare. the head and body black the brest inclining to black headed and billd like a crowe, leggs set very backward wings short leggs set very backward (_sic_) that it move overland very badly only. it may bee a kind of cornix marina. [The latter portion very badly written and difficult to decipher.]