LITTLE GADDESDEN. 235 



be castrated, because their flesh has a much better flavour 

 than when they are left ungelt. 



Spisars skapnad. The shape of the hearth. 



There is almost more wood burnt by one farmer 

 and labourer, Landtman, in England than by one 

 Bonde, &c, in Sweden. England lies some degrees 

 more to the south, which diminishes [T. I. p. 236] the 

 cold in the winter time. Therefore it is not extra- 

 ordinary that there is so great a difference between 

 the winters in England and Sweden, so that while 

 the cattle in Sweden, must be fed for seven or eight 

 months in the stable, they here go out almost the 

 whole year, winter and summer. Many would therefore 

 not be able to imagine that the English cottages, 

 stugorna, in which the folk reside during the winter, 

 were colder than the Swedish, and still less will anyone 

 be able to believe that an English farmer, labourer, 

 peasant, Bonde, Landtman, Torpare, or other, would 

 burn as much if not more wood in the year than a Swede, 

 especially because the winters here are so mild and 

 short ; and moreover, that the districts in most places 

 near London are very woodless, skoglos, but for all 

 that this is in most cases, and in a certain way, true. 

 I will name the reason. The fireplaces, spisarna, are 

 here mostly built, in all the ways in which we build them 

 in Sweden, only with this difference, that here they never 

 use a spjall, or anything else in its place to retain the 

 warmth ; but a spjall is to an Englishman who has 

 never been out of England a thing so unknown, that it 

 is difficult so to describe to him what a spjall is that he 

 'shall understand it. No, here all the warmth goes freely 

 up the chimney ; windows, doors, roof, floor, &c, are not 

 stopped or made tight, but the wind and cold get freely 

 to play through them. There is no moss on the inner 



