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Sir Thomas Browne's 1646 encyclopaedic survey of 'vulgar errors' — popular received opinions Browne subjected to empirical, philological, and natural-philosophical scrutiny. The work is one of the earliest sustained English-language exercises in source-critical natural history, and is the citation point for the technical use of antediluvian as the designation for the period before the Flood. Browne treats the longevity of the patriarchs, the conditions of the pre-Flood world, and the natural history of the Genesis narrative as genuinely contested early-modern questions.