lii INTKODUCTION. 



a good, but perhaps succinct, account of the fauna and field 

 sports of that country, and my ' ' Ten Years in Sweden " 

 will, I trust, do the same as regards Sweden. I have taken 

 equal pains with both, and, as in my Lapland book, so in 

 the following pages, I have stated nothing for which I had 

 not a good foundation. 



But I must observe that if the reader expects to hear 

 of perils and dangers incurred in the chase of the bear, or 

 of extraordinary bags of game, or catches of salmon, he 

 will be altogether disappointed. I never killed a bear all 

 the time I was in Sweden, and as for my game book and 

 fishing journal, I should be ashamed to show them to any 

 brother sportsman. 



But this has been my own fault. I could, I dare say, 

 with very little trouble, have been in at the death of a bear, 

 and I have lived in the vicinity of many excellent trout 

 streams, without troubling myself much about the fish that 

 were in them. Not that I am less fond of the sport than 

 any other Englishman who has been bred to a country life. 

 My time, however, has always been otherwise occupied, in 

 studying the fauna of this magnificent land; and, except 

 just when the snipe and ducks were well in, I seldom cared 

 to fire a shot at any other bird than a rare specimen. Still 

 my occupation of collecting has taken me from Falsterbo 

 Reef to Quickiock, Lapland, and thrown me much among 

 sportsmen of all grades. I have seen the country in 

 various districts, and at different seasons. I have had good 

 opportunities of studying the habits and dispositions of 

 the lower classes, in my various collecting rambles, and I 

 have read the character of the higher orders in that most 

 searching of all tribunals, the privacy of the domestic 

 circle. 



