112
A NATURALIST IN ESSEX A CENTURY AND
A-HALF AGO.1
Kalm's Account of his visit to England on his way to
America in 1748. Translated by Joseph Lucas.
London, 1892.
TO deal with this important work as a whole would involve more
space than can be spared ; but it must be mentioned that
Pehr Kalm was a Swedish gentleman, scholar, and botanist, taking a
special interest in horticulture and agriculture, whose stay in England
at this time lasted from February to August of 1748. His diary
contains a number of references to rural manners and customs, some
of which are enriched by Mr. Lucas' notes, dealing, among many
other matters, with the survival of words in use in rural districts, and
comparisons thereof with the still current forms in other countries.
Unfortunately the work is in disjointed diary form, Essex matters
cropping up in about eighty pages out of the 458 of which the book
consists. . Kalm was now at Woodford, then at Gaddesden in Hert-
fordshire, and elsewhere, back again to Woodford, in London,
Chelsea, and various suburbs of the metropolis; then we find him at
Gravesend, and again in Essex, rendering it impossible to trace a
continuous narrative of his experiences in our county.
To give an idea of the variety of subjects with which our author
filled his diary, it will suffice to quote a few lines from the carefully
compiled index:—Acre-reins, Aftermath, Angria the Sea Rover,
Asses, Barns, Bugs, Burial at Sea, Capstan, Churches, Cows, Duke
of Argyle, Dust, Fairlop Oak, Geese, and so on! Premising that
at Woodford he was much with Richard Warner (author of "Plantae
1 This notice of a book of considerable interest to Essex Naturalists has been kindly written
for our journal by Mr. Gould. It may be interesting to add a few further particulars of Kalm
and his books, which we extract from the "Saturday Review" of May 7th last:—"Born in
1716, Kalm studied at Abo in Sweden, attracted the attention of Linnaeus, became a first-rate
botanist, travelled in Russia, and spent more than five months in England about a century and
a-half ago. His object was to collect statistics, and make a minute and detailed survey of the
system of English agriculture in existence at that time. It is to be noted that his experiences
were confined to the home counties, and especially to certain places in Bedfordshire, Essex, and
Kent. But there never was a man who, within a limited area, took greater pains to ascertain
and record rural facts and statistics, or who brought more intelligence to bear on a subject for
which he had been in a measure prepared by his previous training. The word 'agriculture'
'surprises by himself' a study of no inconsiderable magnitude; and though we meet with some
amusing notes of the dress, the eating and drinking, and the social customs of our forefathers,
the staple of the work is the farm and the plough. It is a Georgic in prose. Kalm, it seems,
published three volumes in his lifetime, one-half of which related to America, and he had
accumulated ample materials for a fourth volume, but they were burned in 1827. What we have
before us is a translation of the whole of Kalm's first volume, and some hundred pages of his
second. We understand from Mr. Lucas that this part has never before been translated.
The voyage in America was taken in hand by Mr. J. Reinhold Forster in the last century,
and may, no doubt, be found by bibliophiles who know where to look for it."—Ed,