NATIONAL EXPOSITION AT RIO DE JANEIRO 115 



fully labeled and classified. These include 345 palms, 144 ferns, 112 

 fruits, and a large number of specimens of special economic and 

 medicinal value, including dyewoods. The colors of the labels dis- 

 tinguish the different groups of plants. For example, dark green is 

 for medicinal plants ; white for cotton ; red for the purely ornamental ; 

 yellow for fibrous ; vermilion and white for dyewoods ; vermilion for oil 

 and resinous; etc. The opportunity here afforded, of a close examina- 

 tion, within a conveniently restricted area, of the characteristic plants 

 of Brazil, is an excellent one. A collection of all the publications of 

 the Botanical Garden is arranged inside the glass pavilion, and includes 

 two volumes of the splendid work by Dr. Barbosa Eodrigues, the 

 director of the garden, " Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensum." These 

 volumes are placed on an inclined shelf, where they may be freely 

 consulted by any visitor, and are not even fastened in any way to the 

 shelf. The authorities must have abundant faith in the honesty of the 

 public here. Or perhaps it may be the duty of some watchman — who 

 was absent on the occasion of the writer's visit — to guard these books. 



The Astronomical Observatory of Rio has put on exhibition a 

 Wiechert seismograph, recently imported from Germany. This ma- 

 chine is of a somewhat simpler pattern than the Bosch-Omori seis- 

 mograph, lately installed in the Geological Section of the Harvard 

 University Museum, at Cambridge. It is very badly set up so far as 

 detecting earthquake shocks is concerned, for it cannot fail to be 

 affected by the movements of the people who are walking about on 

 all sides of it, but the writer was given to understand that, for exhibi- 

 tion purposes, it was desired to have the public see, with its own eyes, 

 how sensitive such a machine is, and from that point of view it is 

 admirably exposed ! The observatory exhibit also includes several large 

 diagrams showing the variations in the different weather elements 

 at Eio during the year. Here one may see the extraordinary pre- 

 ponderance of winds from southeast and from northwest; the slight 

 changes in temperature throughout the year; the marked rainy season 

 of summer; the higher pressure, clearer skies and drier air which 

 characterize the winter. Another meteorological exhibit is that of the 

 ' meteorological department of the Brazilian navy. This branch of the 

 government has charge of the daily weather map and of the daily 

 weather forecast, and has a small working meteorological station in the 

 cupola of the building of the mail and telegraph service, where the work 

 is explained and the forecasts are displayed. 



The broadest generalization that one can give regarding the exhibits 

 as a whole is that the southern states of Brazil are far ahead, indus- 

 trially, of the central and especially of the northern states. This 

 results naturally from the fact that the southern states have a far 

 more extended railroad development and are — or rather because they 



