The dietary during the expedition was fixed upon, partly on the ground of our experience from the wintering of 1872-73, partly under the guidance of a special opinion given with reference to the subject by the distinguished physician who took part in that expedition, Dr. A. Envall. Preserved provisions,[5] butter, flour, &c., were purchased, part at Karlskrona, part in Stockholm and Copenhagen; a portion of pemmican was prepared in Stockholm by Z. Wikstroem; another portion was purchased in England; fresh ripe potatoes[6] were procured from the Mediterranean, a large quantity of cranberry juice from Finland; preserved cloudberries and clothes of reindeer skins, &c., from Norway, through our agent Ebeltoft, and so on--in a word, nothing was neglected to make the vessel as well equipped as possible for the attainment of the great object in view. What this was may be seen from the following PLAN OF THE EXPEDITION, PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY, _July_ 1877. The exploring expeditions, which, during the recent decades, have gone out from Sweden towards the north, have long ago acquired a truly national importance, through the lively interest that has been taken in them everywhere, beyond, as well as within, the fatherland; through the considerable sums of money that have been spent on them by the State, and above all by private persons; through the practical school they have formed for more than thirty Swedish naturalists; through the important scientific and geographical results they have yielded; and through the material for scientific research, which by them has been collected for the Swedish Riks-Museum, and which has made it, in respect of Arctic natural objects, the richest in the world. To this there come to be added discoveries and investigations which already are, or promise in the future to become, of practical importance; for example, the meteorological and hydrographical work of the expeditions; their comprehensive inquiries regarding the Seal and Whale Fisheries in the Polar Seas; the pointing out of the previously unsuspected richness in fish, of the coasts of Spitzbergen; the discoveries, on Bear Island and Spitzbergen, of considerable strata of coal and phosphatic minerals which are likely to be of great economic importance to neighbouring countries; and, above all, the success of the two last expeditions in reaching the mouths of the large Siberian rivers, navigable to the confines of China--the Obi and Yenisej--whereby a problem in navigation, many centuries old, has at last been solved.