EN
We report on measurements of the relative optical-excitation function for the 4^{1}P state of Ca and polarization degree of the 4227-Å resonance line. The measurements were carried out using crossed low-density beams of electrons and calcium atoms, for incident electron energies from 8 to 500 eV. For each electron energy we have used 28 results obtained at different polarizer positions from 0-180 ̊ to extract the required parameters. Excellent agreement between the present results and earlier predictions has been found.