THE 
~AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL, XXI. MAY, 1887. No. 5. 
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE NATURAL 
SCIENCES IN SWEDEN. 
BY FILIP TRYBOM.* 
; N describing the progress of the zoological science in Sweden 
during the later decades, and that, too, in a country with 
such resources as the United States, I beg you to remember that 
though Sweden, the old country in the far north, was happy 
enough to be among the countries in which, during a compara- 
tively early period, the sciences were cultivated, the number of 
its inhabitants is less than that-of the State of New York alone, 
and that its wealth, and consequently the money which can be 
bestowed upon the sciences, always has been limited. 
The homes of the study of natural history in Sweden have 
been and are still the Universities of Upsala and Lund and the 
Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, created by Linneus. The 
predecessors of Linnzeus in Upsala, viz., the Rudbecks, father and 
son, were both eminent zoologists for their time, but the collec- 
` tions they brought together were totally destroyed by fire. Lin- 
nzus and his successors, Wahlenberg-included, who died in 1851, 
were at the same time professors of medicine and natural history, 
thus being obliged to spread themselves over a much too large 
field of work and study. As to Wahlenberg, he mostly devoted 
himself to botany during his long-lasting professorship. It was 
not until three years after his death, or in 1854, that the first 
professorship entirely devoted to zoology was established at the 
z Read before the Biological — of Washington, November 13, 1886. 
VOL, XXI,—NO. 
