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
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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.

    178/520 page 154
    Hedera ätes af Får och är en prydnad vid gårdar. Ivy is eaten by sheep, and is an ornament on houses. The earl who accompanied us told us that sheep willingly eat the leaves of ivy. I had the same story from another afterwards. At St. Alban's, where we dined, this had climbed up the plank fences of some gardens, and covered them, so that at a distance they looked like green-clipped hedges. Källor. In the dales we saw here and there springs of running and clear water. [Only the Gade at and below Great Gaddesden, and the Ver at St. Alban’s.] Tattare. Gypsies. We encountered to-day at several places large troops of the wandering gypsies, with a number of their wives and children, and wondered highly that this useless folk could be tolerated in this country.* There is often a layer of flints resting at once on the ! Chalk-rock,’ but there are no flints in it.” See Mems of the Geol. Survey of Gt. Btn. vol iv., p. 46, 1872, and vol. i., 1889, pp. 67-68. On the site of this chalk-pit I observe, pits just dug to the chalk-rock are scarce. As it was on the S.W. side of a hill it must have been west of Great Gaddesden. If Kalm rode across the nelds by the path from Home Farm, Little Gaddesden, he would then pass two chalk-pits with the required aspect and depth between Little Gaddesden and St. Margarefs, and as the one on the 500 feet contour west of St. Margaret’s touches the chalk-rock beds I believe it to have been this one. I am well acquainted with all the chalk-pits old and new, in the district. [J. L.] * To a Romano-phil this sounds harsh, but only two years before, or in 1746, Jean Gordon was ducked to death in the Eden at Carlisle, a specimen of “ toleration ” that would have reduced Kalm’s wonder, had he been aware of it. It is interesting to find this little notice of English gypsies, which I had not seen when I published my Yetholm Hislory of the Gypsies, Kelso, 1882, in which I collected hundreds of passages relating to the gypsies of Europé, which show how fruitless were the various barbarous means used for their extermination from this and otlier countries. See also p. 353* ori%., p. 161 below. [J. L.]
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