An encourager of this work proposed it as an improvement to the translation of Kalm’s travels, to add in the margin the paging of the original, as by this means recourse would be had easily to the quotations made by Dr. Linnæus. We would very readily have complied with this desideratum, had we had the Swedish edition of this work at hand, or had the work not been too far advanced at the time we got this kind hint: however this will be remedied by a copious index, which will certainly appear at the end of the whole work.
As we have not yet been able to procure a compleat list of the subscribers and encouragers [[xvi]]of this undertaking, we choose rather to postpone it, than to give an imperfect one: at the same time we assure the public, that it shall certainly appear in one of the subsequent volumes.
We find it necessary here to mention, that as many articles in Mr. Kalm’s travels required illustrations, the publisher has taken the liberty to join here and there some notes, which are marked at the end with F. The other notes not thus marked were kindly communicated by the publisher’s friends.
Lastly, we take this opportunity to return our most sincere thanks in this public manner to the ladies and gentlemen, who have generously in various ways exerted themselves in promoting the publication of these useful remarks of an impartial, accurate and judicious foreigner, on a country which is at present so much the object of public deliberation and private conversation. [[1]]
PETER KALM’s
TRAVELS.
August the 5th. 1748.
I with my servant Lars Yungstrœm (who joined to his abilities as gardener, a tolerable skill in mechanics and drawing) went at Gravesend on board the Mary Gally, Captain Lawson, bound for Philadelphia; and though it was so late as six o’clock in the afternoon, we weighed anchor and sailed a good way down the Thames before we again came to anchor.
August the 6th. Very early in the morning we resumed our voyage, and after a few hours sailing we came to the mouth of the Thames, where we turned into the channel and sailed along the Kentish coast, which consists of steep and almost perpendicular [[2]]chalk hills, covered at the top with some soil and a fine verdure, and including strata of flints, as it frequently is found in this kind of chalk-hills in the rest of England. And we were delighted in viewing on them excellent corn fields, covered for the greatest part with wheat, then ripening.
At six o’clock at night, we arrived at Deal, a little well known town, situate at the entrance of a bay exposed to the southern and easterly winds. Here commonly the outward bound ships provide themselves with greens, fresh victuals, brandy, and many more articles. This trade, a fishery, and in the last war the equipping of privateers, has enriched the inhabitants.
August the 7th. When the tide was out, I saw numbers of fishermen resorting to the sandy shallow places, where they find round small eminences caused by the excrements of the log worms, or sea worms, (Lumbrici marini. Linn.) who live in the holes leading to these hillocks, sometimes eighteen inches deep, and they are then dug out with a small three tacked iron fork and used as baits.