1913] Andrews,— * Plants of Wineland the Good" 33 
characterize it as self-sown (which surely implies a contrast with the 
sown wheat), if it was a plant they knew solely in the wild state. Nor 
has Fernald shown that the plant in question has ever been called 
hveiti: the terms “wild wheat," “wheat-grass,” and “strand-wheat”’ 
which he brings as argument involve a comparison with wheat, not an 
identification with it, and none of them are Icelandic, the plant being 
known in Iceland as melr as Fernald notes. Hveiti meant in Old as it 
does in Modern Icelandic wheat. Fernald’s note that this identifica- 
tion of the “self-sown wheat" with Elymus arenarius had already 
been published by Peter (Pehr) Kalm in 1764 is of decided interest, 
but does not prove its correctness. It may be of interest to note a 
prior publication of the same identification, viz. in a dissertation of 
G. A. Westman defended by its author in Abo in 1757, during the 
rectorship of Kalm himself the dissertation being evidently largely 
inspired by the latter's American trip.! The author's refutation of 
the idea that the wheat of the Norsemen was Zizania is not dissimilar 
to Fernald's, Westman maintaining that this last plant resembled 
oats more than it did wheat and that it did not grow in fields, but 
actually in the water (pp. 16ff.). Kalm's idea also found expression 
in the article of Wormskiold to be referred to later. 
As to the wood called mosurr Fernald may be entirely right in think- 
ing it to be birch, or for that matter the white birch. The idea that. 
it was maple, which Fernald combats, is however not one that has been 
‘generally held, but was evidently found in Reeves’ book (Reeves, 
p. 170, does not commit himself however and states himself that the 
word had already been connected with Swedish masbjórk, etc), whence 
it may be followed back to Rafn? and is by him accredited to Worm- 
skiold.2 This identification also goes back ultimately to Kalm’s 
American trip, the wood being discussed very sensibly by Westman 
in the dissertation just referred to (pp. 12ff.), who suggested that it 
might be the form of Acer rubrum seen by Kalm in Canada. If 
Fernald had based his researches upon Storm's work, he would have 
noted that the latter made no attempt to identify the tree, doubtless 
because he understood the word. The present Swedish masur and 
German Maser leave no doubt as to the meaning of the identical Old 
Norse word mosurr. It means everywhere wood with a spotted or 
1 Westman, Itinera priscorum Scandianorum in Americam. Aboae. 1757. 
? Antiquitates americanae, 441f. 1837. 
3 Det skandinaviske Litteraturselskabs Skrifter, xiii, 400ff, 1814. 
