EXCURSION TO SWEDEN. 77 



At a short distance from the Academy is the Biological 

 Museum, and upon hearing that it was the only one of its kind 

 in the world, most of the members visited it. Its treatment 

 certainly is original, and deserves every praise. Nearly three 

 thousand animals have been brought together, classified not as 

 in ordinary museums in genera and species, but as they are 

 found associated in nature. With the aid of panoramic eflfects, 

 the natural surroundings of the animals have been reproduced. 

 In their natural positions and environment, specimens of nearly 

 all the Scandinavian fauna are found there. Usually even the 

 commonest animals exhibited in public repositories are rendered 

 difficult of recognition by their inartistic treatment. Confined 

 within angular cases of glass, they require for their determina- 

 tion the help of a largely written label. In the Djurg3,rden 

 Museum, however, birds appear flying in mid-air, or perched 

 upon the actual trees of their native forest. Coveys of moor 

 fowl are amongst the heather ; guillemots crowd upon ledges 

 of rock that reach down to the blue sea ; ospreys, sandpipers, 

 oyster-catchers, cormorants, are upon the shore. The effect is 

 both realistic and educative. 



Skansen Park also deserves mention. It is a unique and 

 typically Scandinavian institution. Indeed, it aspires to 

 epitomise in graphic manner the past history of the Swedish 

 nation. In it are vestiges of the Stone Age, in Druidical 

 remains, stone chests and urns ; mud huts are represented ; farm 

 buildings of long ago are there, with implements and house- 

 hold utensils — the distant prototypes of what are used to-day. 

 Buildings of histoi'ic interest are preserved or reproduced in 

 Skansen ; for instance, the house of Emmanuel Swedenborg, 

 peculiarly formed granaries from Ostergotland, stone huts from 

 Holland — all fittingly treated in their surroundings. With 

 Skansen is associated the Hasselbacken restaurant. It so 

 happened that the Scottish Society dined at Hasselbacken on 

 the 26th July — the great anniversary of the poet Bellman. 

 Bellman is Sweden's Robert Burns ; he is the popular poet, 

 the writer of songs and lyrics. A statue to his memory has 

 been erected at Hasselbacken ; and on the evening of his anni- 

 versary, Stockholm gathers round it as at a shrine, to sing his 

 songs and his praises. The arboriculturists had thus an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing life in the Swedish capital at one of its gayest 

 moments. 



