122 B. D. JACKSON — ON SOME OVERLOOKED RECORDS 



stack was well within our borders, namely at Hudnall. In most 

 cases Kalm cites the names given in Linnaeus' s ' Flora Suecica,' 

 ed. 1 (1745), to which he had contributed information. 



These records, amounting to 58, naturally escaped attention 

 so long as they existed only in their original form, as part of 

 ' En resa till Norra America . . . af Pehr Kalm,' . . . Stockh. 

 1753-56. 



The foregoing statement induced me to refer to the account 

 of Ellis which is given by Mr. James Britten in the English 

 Dialect Society's volume for 1880, p. 30, where it forms part 

 of a treatise on old fanning words, including names of plants. 

 As I expected, I found many weeds and well-known plants 

 mentioned, all under their vernacular names, which I have included 

 in the following list, under the detennination given by Mr. Britten, 

 checking them occasionally with the reductions afforded by Messrs. 

 Britten and Holland in their ' Dictionary of English Plant Names,' 

 issued by the same Society, in 1878-86. There is one alteration 

 I have made where Narthecium ossifragum, Huds., a plant not 

 recorded for the county, is cited as the equivalent of Ellis's 

 " moor- grass " : in this case I have taken the more likely reduction 

 of Messrs. Britten and Holland, Eriophorum angustifolium. The 

 description given by Ellis of a certain poisonous weed, undoubtedly 

 belongs to Ifercurialis perennis, although Mr. Britten fails to 

 identify the plant. 



I extract the following account of Ellis from Mr. Britten's 

 remarks in the volume already cited: — "Ellis was a farmer at 

 Little Gaddesden, in Hertfordshire, during the last century. Very 

 little is known about him, but from his ' Modern Husbandman ' 

 we gather incidentally that he had been fifty years a resident in 

 the locality, which makes it probable that he was born there ; 

 that he had travelled both in England and on the Continent ; that 

 he had a wife and six children, the latter of whom he took pains 



to train in agiicultural pursuits It is clear that he was 



a man of much intelligence, although he refers to his ' illiterature ' : 

 his writings have a strong local colouring, and record for the 

 most part his experience as a Hertfordshire farmer" (p. viii). 

 Again, quoting from his posthiimous 'Husbandry abridged,' 1772, 

 Mr. Britten continues — "His education was something not much 

 superior to that of the general run of common farmers, but he 

 inherited from nature strong and active parts, which enabled him 



to rise into a sphere superior to his brethren Any person 



in Great Britain might send for him, on paying for his time and 



expenses Having engaged for larger quantities of MSS. 



than his materials of real excellence would allow, all his pieces are 

 nearly equal in being filled with trash. This did his reputation 

 so much mischief, and at last injured him so much with the 

 public, that he no longer found any pecuniary advantage in 

 writing, but stuck to his farm, and very wisely depended on that 

 alone .... instruments, he procured them, and sold them to 

 any persons. . . . . Ellis made a trafiick, sometimes profitably, 



