women. III. With regard to other articles of trade, CHAP. the inferiority of the Swedish workmanship, and in many instances the total want of the article itself, is very striking. A whole day may be lost in inquiring for the most common necessaries. Of all things for which a traveller may have need, we thought that furs might be obtained here in the greatest perfection, and at the most reasonable prices; but even this branch of trade seemed to be almost a monopoly in the hands of the English. The best furs were all imported from England, and came, as it was said, originally from America; consequently the prices were very high, and the articles rare. All optical instruments were the wares of those vagrant Italians from the Milanese territory, whom we have before described as wandering with the proofs of their industry and ingenuity in every part of Europe. Models. It is difficult to reconcile this want of manufactures with the inventive genius shewn by the Swedes in one of the most pleasing of the public exhibitions of their capital-that of the Cabinet Cabinet of of Models. This cabinet is preserved in an antient palace, where the courts of justice are now held, near Riddarholm Church. As a repository of the models of all kinds of mechanical contrivances, it is the most complete collection that CHAP. III. is known. We went several times to view it; and would gladly have brought to England specimens of the many useful inventions there shewn'. In this chamber, it is not only the number of the models that strikes the spectator, but their great beauty and the exquisite perfection of the workmanship, added to the neatness with which they are arranged and displayed. Every thing necessary to illustrate the art of agriculture in Sweden may be here studied ;-models of all the ploughs used in all the provinces from Smoland to Lapland; machines for chopping straw, for cutting turf to cover houses, for sawing timber, for tearing up the roots of trees in the forests, and for draining land; stoves for warming apartments, and for drying all sorts of fruit; machines for threshing corn; corn-racks; windmills; pumps; all sorts of mining apparatus; fishing-tackle; nets; fire-ladders; beds and chairs for the sick; in short, models of almost every mechanical aid requisite for the comforts and necessaries of life, within doors or without. There can be no doubt but that patents would be required for some of them, if they were known in England: and possibly patents may have been (1) Mr. Cripps succeeded in purchasing copies of some of them; such as, a machine upon an improved plan for denchering land; and models of some of the Swedish stoves for heating apartments. granted for inventions that were borrowed from the models in this chamber. Among them are models for light-houses, telegraphs, and other methods of making signals. CHAP. III. Mines. Upon this our second visit to Stockholm, we College of again examined the collection of minerals belonging to the Crown; and were much indebted to the celebrated chemist Hjelm, for the readiness he always shewed to gratify our curiosity; allowing us to inspect all the produce of the Swedish mines. The refractory nature of some of the richest iron ores of this country and of Lapland is owing to the presence of several remarkable extraneous bodies; among which may be mentioned titanium, zircon, and phosphate of lime. We had made a large collection of these ores, and the nature of them is now well ascertained. In the account we gave of our first visit to this collection, a specimen was slightly alluded to, exhibiting a remarkable prismatic configuration, taken from the bottom of a furnace in Siberia'. How it was brought to Stockholm we did not learn. Some of the Swedish mineralo (2) The last was discovered by Dr. Wollaston, in some of the iron ore which was brought from Lapland. Zircon was discovered in iron ore by Mr. Swedenstierna of Stockholm. (See Thomson's Trav. in Sweden, p. 105. Lond. 1813.) In some of the iron ore of Gellivara, crystals of zircon might be discerned. (3) See p. 204 of Vol. IX. of these Travels. III. Igneous CHAP. gists attached more importance to this artificial appearance than we did; considering it as a satisfactory elucidation of the origin of what is commonly called the basaltic formation by means of igneous fusion. We caused an accurate drawing to be made of it, by Martin, which has been engraved as a Vignette to this Chapter. By this it will appear, that the prismatic form which the mass assumed in cooling after fusion, can hardly be considered as characterized by that regularity of structure which belongs to basalt; that is to say, to those rocks in which hornblende, forming a predominant ingredient, generally occasions a much nearer approach to crystallization: nor would the subject have been again introduced, were it not for the contending theories which prevail respecting the origin of rocks exhibiting a prismatic structure, and the proofs urged to demonstrate that basalt has sustained the igneous fusion'. Persons who main (1) Some of these proofs, it must be owned, have been strangely defective. A very principal one was this-that coal, lying in contact with basalt, had, by the heat of the melted basalt, been converted into coke. It happened to the author to be permitted to examine a series of specimens of this supposed coke: they were preserved in a very celebrated collection, and arranged in a regular order, from the state of the natural and unaltered pit-coal, through all the changes which the mineral had been said to have sustained, of incipient and more perfect calcination, until it appeared as a scoriaceous body, deprived, it was maintained, of its bituminous and volatile ingredients, in which state it was denominated coke. Το tain this opinion, will find, in this solitary example, something calculated to support their favourite hypothesis. CHAP. III. Charles the worn by Twelfth when he was assas sinated. The hat and clothes worn by Charles the Twelfth Apparel when he was shot in the trenches before Frederickshall are preserved in the Arsenal in the north suburb, precisely in the state in which they were taken from the King's body after his assassination. That he was really assassinated, seems so clear, that it is marvellous any doubt should be entertained as to the fact; and yet, with a view to ascertain the truth as to the manner of his death, every succeeding sovereign has thought it right to open his sepulchre, and to inspect his embalmed remains. The other curiosities contained also in the arsenal are, the skin of a horse upon which Gustavus Adolphus rode at the battle of Lutzen; a boat built by Peter the Great at Sardam in Holland, taken by the Swedes while on its way to Petersburgh; a number of trophies taken by Charles the Twelfth, from the Russians, the Poles, and the Danes; also To this last substance the author's attention was particularly directed. Being permitted to examine and to analyze it, he found that its scoriaceous and porous texture was entirely owing to a number of little cavities which had been occupied by a granular carbonate of lime; a notable quantity of which was still disseminated throughout the mass, but which had undergone no calcination: it effervesced in acids, as usual; and lime was precipitated from its solution. |