Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations.

  • Pehr Kalm
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    harvest are past, they return home with the money which they have been able to earn. In the same way as the Irishmen seek their food and income on this side in the summer, so it is the case with those from Whales or Wallis that they earn their money also on this side of England in Kent, for towards the haymaking season, hö-bärgnings-tiden, the folk come from thence in very large numbers down to the country parts of Kent to work for wages ; but with this difference that instead of only men coming as from Ireland, there come mostly only' women and girls, bara qvin folk, bustrur, ocb pigor, from Wales, all well, cleanly, and very neatly clad. These perform nearly all the summer cropping in Kent, both of hay and grain. They also take down and pluck off the hops. They remake the hop gardens. They [T. I. p. 470] gather the various kinds of beautiful fruits which Kent produces. But I wdl return to the farmers in Middlesex, and their meadow cultivation, ängs-skötsel. It is there the afore- named Irishmen, whom they employ in summer to mow and carry all their hay. As soon as the meadow has thus been mown in the month of May, and the hay stacked, no cattle are turned into the meadows, but the grass then at once has freedom to begin to shoot and grow, in which it makes such progress that if the weather is good they often get to mow them for the second time by the beginning of July. If it happens, then, that they have finished the aftermath or second mowing early, even then no cattle are slipped into the meadows to bait, but the grass is again left freedom to grow, by which they get to mow the meadows for the third time in September. But if the spring is late, as it was thisyear [1748] so that they cannot finish the first mowing before the close of May or the beginning of June, and consequently the second not before the second half of July, then they do G 2
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