FEMSJO IN FRIES' DAY. 



The illustration on the opposite page represents Femsjo in the 

 early days of Elias Fries. It has never been published, and was made 

 from an oil painting in the possession of Theodore Fries at Upsala. 

 1 he house on the left is the house in which Elias Fries was born, and 

 where he lived when he did his early work with fungi. His father was 

 pastor of the church on the right. 



Femsjo is located in southern Sweden, and seems to me to be 

 about on the dividing line between the southern and northern regions, 

 so that it embraces the flora of both. Southern Sweden is a rich, roll- 

 ing, agricultural country. The prevailing wood is beech. Northern 

 Sweden is for the most part a rocky, hilly, sterile region, with a few- 

 fertile spots in the valleys, but principally rocks and woods. The pre- 

 vailing forest trees are pine and spruce, with occasionally a few sec- 

 tions of frondose woods along the lakes. The region at Femsjo is a 

 combination of both these types. The greater part of the forests is of 

 acerous wood, but sandwiched in between are a few large tracts of 

 beech woods. Fries was therefore most fortunately situated at Femsjo 

 to find the fungi that occur in both woods. 



From an agricultural point of view, Femsjo is a most barren re- 

 gion, for while the soil is very fertile (that is, what soil there is), the 

 rocks are far more abundant than the soil. Before a field can be pre- 

 pared for cultivation the rocks have to be removed, or perhaps "quar- 

 ried" would be a better word. The greater part of the country around 

 Femsjo is in a wild state even to this day, doubtless due to the labor 

 involved in preparing the soil for cultivation. Under these adverse 

 conditions of agriculture, farming means a constant struggle, and sir:h 

 a life develops characters of thrift and economy instead of waste, as 

 in more favored regions. The average American farmer would starve 

 to death on a farm at Femsjo, but the Swedes make good crops of 

 hay, for example on a rocky field that would not be considered worth 

 the labor of harvesting in our country. 



Fries' father, who was a highly educated man, spent his life as 

 pastor of the little church that vou see in our illustration. Excepting 

 the time he spent in college, Elias Fries lived here during the early 

 years of his life, until the age of forty years, when he was offered a 

 professorship in the University of Upsala and removed with his family 

 to this city. The old church at Femsjo remains practically the same 

 as it was in Fries' time, with the exception of a few minor changes. 

 The old home has been torn down and a new pastor's residence built, 

 seme what farther to the left than the building in the picture. In fact. 

 with the exception of the church, the entire surroundings have been 

 so changed as to be scarcely recognizable. I am told by Theodore Fries 

 that this oil painting is a very accurate representation of the surround- 

 ings at that time, as he \vell remembers it when a boy. 



As Elias Fries has had more influence on the development of the 

 mycology of Europe than all others combined, with the exception of 



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