Three years later he moved to the RCP's premises at Amen Corner near St Paul's Cathedral, as the first Harveian Librarian, for which he received room and board and a small stipend.

[1] Merret collected new plants, maintained a herb garden and compiled one of the first lists of the flora, fauna and minerals of England, the Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum.

[6] However it represents the first lists of British birds and butterflies,[7] and contains one of the first statements by an Englishman on the organic origin of fossils: …it is abundantly clear to me that many stones considered to be inorganic are fashioned out of animals or their parts through the action of some earthen fluid; that they had communicated their shape to the clay or soft earth, and had then perished though their figure was preserved[6]Merret had a particular interest in industrial uses of minerals, publishing papers on smelting and tin mining.

[8] Today this would be called the méthode champenoise, the addition of liqueur de tirage in order to stimulate a secondary fermentation that produces the bubbles in sparkling wine.

Sir Robert Mansell obtained a monopoly on glass production in England in the early 17th century and industrialised the process; his coal-powered factories in Newcastle upon Tyne produced much stronger bottles than were available in France.