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iv. education and . mental culture.
by his researches regarding the primeval inhabitants of Scandinavia, endeavoured
to determine the shape of the cranium of the Stone and Bronze Age peoples,
but the number of crania that he had access to was too small to allow of any
definite and reliable results being attained. On the basis of a larger supply of
crania, collected during succeeding decades from ancient graves by N. G. Bruzelius
(1826—95), B. E. Hildebrand (1806—84), G. von Diiben {1822—92), G. Retzius
(born 1842), 0. Montelius (born 1843), H. Hildebrand (1842—1913), and others,
G. Retzius was able, in his extensive work "Crania suecica antiqua" (1899—1900),
to give an account of the shapes of cranium that were prevalent in the Stone,
Bronze, and Iron Ages in Sweden and which characterised the inhabitants of
Sweden in primitive times. In "Anthropologica suecica", a large work published in
1902 by G. Retzius and C. M. Furst (born 1854), the materials for which were
collected, at the instance of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography,
partly by the authors and partly by a number of young medical men, from an
examination of the Swedish conscripts of the year 1897—98 (about 45 000 men),
there were discussed and defined the principal anthropological characters, viz. the
shape of the skull, the length of the body, the colour of the hair and of the eyes,
for the presentday population of Sweden in the various provinces. (V. p. 146 foil.).
J. V. Hultkrantz (born 1862) had previously published an extensive report on the
length of the body, based upon material, embracing more than 232 000 men,
collected by the military authorities and covering the years 1887—94. E. Clason
(1829—1912) contributed data respecting the shape of the cranium among Swedes,
especially during the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. C. M. Fiirst has further
described a number of crania and cranium-series recently discovered, mostly
dating from the Stone and Iron Ages, and has dealt with other important
subjects in the department of Anthropology. G. Backman (born 1883) has
published an exhaustive description of a group of Gottland crania dating back to
the earlier Middle Ages and has also written several other works on
Anthropology. Finally, in 1911, a posthumous work by G. von Duben appeared, giving
tables of measurements taken by him on Laplander crania.
Botany.
The study of the vegetable kingdom and its phenomena had originally, in
Sweden as in other countries, purely practical aims, among which the principal
was to ascertain what plants could be used for medicinal purposes. J.
Chesne-copherus (1581—1635) and J. Franck (1590—1661) deserve mention as the
oldest Swedish writers on botany, although their works bear witness more to an
assiduous study of foreign writers than to their own power of observation. It
was not until the latter half of the 17th century that botany attained an
independent position in Sweden, when O. Rudbeck, the elder, (1630—1702) and
O. Rudbeck the younger (1660—1740) published a great work, »Campi Elysew,
containing illustrations — which were extremely good for that period — of
about 6,000 varieties of plants.
During the following century, botany attained a well-nigh dominating position
in the scientific research of the country, thanks to Sweden’s greatest naturalist,
Carolus Linnceus (ennobled as von Linne), who was born at Råshult in
Småland on May 23rd, 1707. According to the custom of the time, Linnæus took
his degree of Doctor of Medicine abroad, namely in 1735 at Hardersvik in
Holland, a town that was much visited by the Swedes of that period. He
afterwards spent several years in Holland, when he published a fine series of
original scientific works which gained for him European fame as a scientist
and won him many friends and patrons among the most famous naturalists of
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