The Swedish Diet, shortly after our return, in the year 1.904 made a grant of 
55,000 Swedish Crowns (£ 3,050) for the publication of the more important results 
of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition. As ir was evident that this sum, together 
with the money accruing from the sale of the work, could not be sufficient to 
publish an account of all the collections and results of the Expedition from the 
very beginning the plan of the Work now completed was so arranged that printing 
the results that were directly connected with the purely Antarctic operations should 
be given priority, while other departments, more especially the description of forms 
collected in the adjacent semi-temperate oceans, could, if deemed advisable, be left 
to other hands, and in many cases this has been the case. 
Since that date more than sixteen years have elapsed, without it being possible, 
as, yet, to bring to a close the elaboration of all the collections of the Expedition. 
Besides the sum granted by the Diet, contributions towards the publishing of the 
work have been bestowed by Messrs John Carlsson and Knut Tillberg, and a number 
of donors in Gothenborg have given special contributions for rendering possible a 
richer illustration of certain portions of the Work nevertheless the available funds 
have proved insufficient for the expenses of elaborating and printing hitherto under- 
taken. It has therefore several times been mooted to cease publishing the work, 
but this can scarcely come about so long as important portions of the Antarctic 
observations are as yet unpublished. It is only when the terrestrial-magnetic observa- 
tions of the Expedition have now been elaborated and printed that we can say 
that the entire portion of our material, for the publication of which this work was 
from the first intended, e. g. first and foremost the geophysical, oceanographic and 
geological operations in the Antarctic, and the description of the poor Antarctic 
vegetation, is now completed. What now remains is almost exclusively the elabora- 
tion of some collections of marine zoological forms. It is sincerely to be hoped 
that these results, as far as possible, may be issued in a special supplement. 
