_Capitula squamosa jacææ æmula_: "little scaley (or imbricated) heads resembling the heads of Jacea" (Black Knapweed). The Artichoke Gall. _Andricus fecundatrix_; Htg.
_Nodi_: probably swellings of any sort, whether caused by insects or not.
_Melleus liquor_: Honey-dew, a secretion of Aphides.
_Tubera radicum vermibus scatentia_: "swollen tubers on the roots containing grubs;" without doubt the Root-Gall, _Andricus radicis_, Fab. Polythalamous Galls, often very large at the roots or on the trunk near the ground.
Mosses, Lichens, and Fungi, all "genuine products of the Oak," need no comment, but Mr. Bloomfield remarks, "How wonderfully observant Sir Thomas Browne must have been thus to distinguish the various galls, &c., and to point them out so distinctly."
Browne's contemporary, Dean Wren, seems sadly to have misunderstood the fructification of the Oak. In a note on Browne's remarks on the "Miseltoe" (_Pseudodoxia_, book ii., chap. vi.), he says, "Arboreous excrescences of the Oak are soe many as may raise the greatest wonder. Besides the gall, which is his proper fruite, hee shootes out oakerns, i.e., _ut nunc vocamus_ (acornes), and oakes apples, and polypodye, and moss; five several sorts of excrescences." See also letter to his son, Dr. Edward Browne, in which Sir Thomas Browne says that "wee haue little or none of _viscus quercinus_, or miselto of the oake, in this country; butt I beleeve they have in the woods and parks of Oxfordshyre."--Wilkin, i, p. 279.
[_Fol. 43._] Capillaris marina sparsa fucus capillaris marinus sparsus sive capillitius marinus or sea periwigge.[113] strings of this are often found on the sea shoare. but this is the full figure I haue seen 3 times as large.
[113] In Sir Thomas Browne's time the Hydrozoa were not distinguished from the Corallines, and both were regarded as vegetable growths. It is almost impossible to determine from his vague descriptions even to which section those mentioned belong, but although our exposed coast-line is not favourable to such growths, there are a few common species of Hydroid Zoophytes which abound here, and to these, fortunately, Browne's specimens appear to belong. What he calls the "Sea-perriwig" is doubtless _Sertularia operculata_, Lin., sometimes known as "Sea-hair," a very common and widely dispersed species.