[6] The original is very obscure, and I have been obliged partly to guess at the sense of the intermingled Latin and Swedish. I beg leave to suggest that the deficiency of brandy among this sequestered people is perhaps a more probable cause of their robust stature, and even of their neatness and refinement, than that assigned by Linnæus. Brandy is not always to be had here. The people are humane and civilized. Their houses are handsome externally, as well as neat and comfortable within; in which respects they have the advantage of most other places. The old tradition, that the inhabitants of Helsingland never have the ague, is without foundation. In every parish where I made the inquiry I found many persons who had had that disorder, which appears to be not unfrequent among them. Here were plenty of Mountain Finches (_Fringilla Montifringilla_); but, what is remarkable, they were all males, known by the orange-coloured spot on the breast. _May 16._ Between Eksund post-house and Spange is the capital iron forge of Eksund, which has two hammers and one blast furnace. The sons of Vulcan were working in their shirts, and seemed masters of their business. The ore used here is of three or four kinds. First, from Dannemora; second, from Soderom; third, from Grusone, which contains beautiful cubical pyrites; fourth, a black ore from the parish of Arbro, which lies at the bottom of the sea, but in stormy weather is thrown upon the shore. At this place, as well as further north in the same district, a kind of blueish stone[7] is used for building the tunnels or chimneys, which is considered as more compact and better able to resist heat than _Lapis molaris_ or _Pipsten_ (_Cos molaris?_). The limestone placed between the other stones was procured from the sea shore, and abounded with petrified corals. [7] Probably _Saxum fornacum_, _Linn. Syst. Nat. ed. 12. v. 3. 79_. Granite, I believe of all the different kinds existing in the world, abounds every where in the forests. In every river a wheel is placed, contrived to lift up a hammer for the purpose of bruising flax. [Illustration] When it is not wanted, a trap door is raised, to turn the stream aside. Several butterflies were to be seen in the forest, as the common black, and the large black and white. Here I noticed _Lichenoides terrestre scutatum albicans_, (_Lichen arcticus_), which has larger fructification than the common _L. caninus_, with which it agrees in other respects, except colour. (See Linnæus's opinion respecting this Lichen, in which however he is certainly mistaken, in _Fl. Lapponica n. 442_.) By the road side between Nieutænger and Bringstad, a violet-coloured clay, used in building bridges, is here and there to be met with. On a wall at Iggsund I found a nondescript hemipterous insect. (What this was cannot now be ascertained.)