SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 77 useless speculations: they often sliow some pro- priety of description, or elegance of allusion, ut- terly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in oriental botany ; and are sometimes of more im- portant use, as they remove some difficulty from narration, or some obscurity from precepts. A se- cond of these tracts is entitled, " Of Garlands, or Coronary or Garland Plants." A third is,
- ' A Letter on the Fishes eaten by our Saviour with
his Disciples, after his Resurrection from the Dead — this treatise is unsatisfactory, however, in its result, as all the information that diligence lor learning could supply, consists in an enumera-
- tion of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea.
A fourth is entitled, "Answers to certain Queries about Fishes, Birds, and Insects, and a Letter of Hawks and Falconry, ancient and modern." This last has some curious observations on the art of ihawking*, which he considers as a practice un- i known to the ancients. Another of his discourses is, " On Languages, and particularly the Saxon jTongue." " So much," he observes, " of the old Saxon still iremains in our English, as may admit of an orderly discourse and series of good sense, such as not only the present English, but ^Ifric, Bede, and Alfred might understand, after so many hundred years. It is true that we have borrowed from the French many substantives, adjectives, and some |i * One of the oldest practices in falconry he mentions to have I been the following : — " If a hawk were unquiet, they hooded hira, f and placed him in a smith's shop for some time, where, accustomed to the continual noise of hammering, he became more gentle and I tractable."
