Page:PettyWilliam1899EconomicWritingsVol2.djvu/127

432

Though Graunt appears to have written, in addition to the "Observations," something on the advance of excise and something on religion, it is probable that nothing else from his pen has been preserved save the following brief note in Birch's History of the Royal Society, vol. . p. 294:—

19 Aug. 1663. "Mr Graunt brought in his account of the multiplication and growth of carps and salmons; which was ordered to be registered, as follows:

A pond new digged in Deptford for horses and other cattle to water in the year 1658, two male and two female carp being then put in with intention to breed; in the year 1662 the pond being tainted with fish, so that the cattle refused to drink, there were then taken out of this pond eight hundred, seventy and odd carps, of about nine inches in length, some more, some less; a great number of smaller fish being left for breeders.

And in the Severne and elsewhere it hath been experimented, by fastening of small pieces of tape or silk through the gills of young salmon, that in two years they have advanced to near three foot in length."

The following abstract of the weekly bills of mortality of London for the years 1597—1600, hitherto unprinted, are among the Ashmole MSS. (824, f. 196—199) in the Bodleian Library. They fill a portion of the gap between the series of bills for 1578—1583 printed by Dr Creighton and Graunt's tables. They indicate the growth of population in the urban district and establish affirmatively the comparative freedom of the city from the plague during four years of peculiar interest in the history of the English drama.