TRANSACTIONS. THOMAS MOFFET IN SUFFOLK, 1585. BY THE EDITOR.
THE MAN.—Biology and archaeology, though often exclaimed upon with equally inane joy at meetings of Field Clubs, are not compatible studies, excepting solely in the case of Early Man : they run parallelly and never elsewhere associate. Hence, and from the time that has since elapsed, it is that Moffet's residence in our County has been hitherto ignored. His father Thomas was a Scot haberdasher of famous London town, who married the Kentish Alice Ashley, so their second son, our Thomas born 1553, was both canny and sober. He had his own way to make in the World, for which purpöse, after matriculating as a pensioner at Trinity in Cambridge 1569, he took his B.A. at Caius in 1572 ; next he attended medical lectures at Basle, where he gained his M.D. in 1578, and the following year began the usual Continental tour, being much Struck by Italian Silkworm culture. Then began the serious doctor's practice that lasted nine years from 1582, ending in detailment to the forces under Lord Essex in Normandy. That his medical knowledge, for that period, was adequate is shown by his selection for attendance upon the Duchess Ann Seymour of Somerset, widow of the Protector, in her last malady ; and his later frequent sojourns at Queen Elizabeth's court, where Drake once showed him a Flying Fish, " Milvus marinus." The very recognition of his ability seems to have marred his later years, which were spent, in attendance upon patrons, at Bulbridge which was a house given him by the Earl of Pembroke, under whose countenance he became M.P. for Wilton in 1597 ; there on 5 June 1604 he died and was buried (DNB. 1894, kindly copied by Mr. H. R. Lingwood). THE BOOK.—Thomas Moffet is to this day celebrated among scientists as the first British author to write a book upon Insects or, indeed, Natural History in general: with his numerous medical treatises we are not concerned. A very remarkable book it Was ! And still is, for the original MS. with sumptuous figures remains to-day in the British museum, showing much matter never published. It was begun by the Swiss Konrad Gesner, who based it upon Edward Wotton of Oxford's De Differentis Animalium, published in Paris 1552. Gesner died at Zürich in 1565, when the MS. came to his executor the Lancashire Thomas Penny, M.D., who sported his plate in London's then fashionable Leadenhall-street near the eider