Geologically considered, Sweden is situated around the centre of the ancient Scandinavian land-ice, and in the greater part of the country only two of the geological series, the oldest and the youngest, are represented. Thus the uneven, undulating surface of the Archæan rocks, on which almost the whole country is firmly set, is in general covered with quaternary deposits of gravel and clay. The mountains are rich in iron ore, the streams and lakes in fish, the woods in game, but the soil, itself of a good quality, unfortunately rich in stones. This last-mentioned circumstance, together with the rather severe climate, which yet is a good deal milder than might be expected, especially in the southern and western parts of the country, makes agriculture, which is the most important industry, profitable only on the extensive plains of Scania, Upland and West and East Gothland. Still barley and rye are cultivated within the Polar Circle, ripening in remarkably short time under the nocturnal light of the Midsummer sun. Dense forests cover Sweden in the very same latitude in which Greenland is clad by eternal ice. The short summers are of a surpassing loveliness. In Norrland there is a Swedish _læn_, or governmental district, of the size of the State of Ohio, on which, between the 5th of June and the 11th of July, the sun never sets. If the earth was perfectly plain and even one would be able to see the sun above the horizon continually during this period. But these northerly regions are very mountainous, and consequently you will have to climb a high peak in order to see the wonderful sight of a sun which stands still when it should set, and which marks the difference between night and day only by a rolling motion in the horizon. There is no country in the world where so many places for such observation are reached so easily as in Sweden. One may travel the whole distance from the southernmost point of the country to the very base of a mountain, Gellivara, Sweden’s Klondike, from which the midnight sun can be seen for thirty-seven nights in succession. But although the sun itself is visible only from the mountain peaks above the Polar Circle, the nocturnal light steeps the whole realm in midsummer-night’s dreams of magic colors and reflections. The Swedish people are of Teutonic stock and have lived in the land they still inhabit for at least four thousand years, during this entire period not having assimilated other nationalities, or at least to no extent worth mentioning, so that the Swedish nation is of an origin far purer than any other at present existing.