5 
men have more than once vied successfully with those of the 
most illustrious of their contemporaries. But a Berzelius 
and a Nordenskjold have shown the practical tendency of 
Swedish science, such as indeed it should be in a country 
where the necessity of turning the natural resources to 
profit is so great, and where scientific research may be said, 
in a great part, to have taken its rise from the teachings of 
Linnaeus. At the beginning of our century Sweden was poor 
and exhausted. Altogether regenerated since that time, it 
now presents the spectacle of a flourishing and well-culti- 
vated country. 
In the midst of this general progress, one branch of 
Swedish industry has, however, remained far behind. The 
Swedish fisheries are as yet far from what they naturally 
ought to be, viz. one of the most important trades of the 
country. If, however, not a little has been achieved, this is 
no more than ought to be expected in the country where 
modern fish-culture, based on the experience of natural 
history, has one of its most important sources in an essay 
on the cultivation of spring-spawning fishes, written by Mr. 
Lund, alderman in Linkoping, and published in 1761, in the 
‘ Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.’ 
From the time of Linnaeus, viz., in 1766, Sweden had 
inherited a Fishery Law, the terms of which, even at the 
present day, might serve as a model of what the aim and 
regulations of any well-directed fishing industry should be. 
But political changes and the modern development of 
manufactures and trade made a revision of this Fishery 
Law necessary ; and in 1852 the present Fishery Law was 
promulgated, which has essentially retained the terms of 
the preceding one. Thus the development of the Swedish 
fisheries has, for a long time back, been directed by regu- 
lations founded on the results of scientific research and on 
