MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 135 



adjacent to this a circular building called the " Panorama," holding tapestry, 

 Sevres porcelain, the regalia of France, etc. Lastly, there was a supplemental 

 building, called the Annexe, which contained the machinery, raw products, 

 etc. The space devoted to exhibition amounted to about 1,050,000 square 

 feet, this being about 4, 000 feet more than the contents of the London Exhibi- 

 tion. The Palace contained 500,000 square feet, the Annexe 400,000, and the 

 Panorama and galleries 150,000. The Palace is in shape an oblong quad- 

 rangle, 930 feet by 360, with projecting portions at the comers, and in the 

 middle of the two principal fronts. It is constructed of stone, and is roofed 

 archwise with glass. The doors are twenty-eight in number. The Annexe 

 is nearly three quarters of a mile in length. Excluding the fine arts, the num- 

 ber of exhibitors was about 19,000, or 2,000 more than in London." 



The exhibition made by American exhibitors was quite small, and confined 

 mostly to agricultural implements, India-rubber goods, and a few machines. 

 In results, however, the American department was most successful. In the 

 trials of agricultural implements the American machines, whenever competing, 

 bore away the prizes, and, as hi England in 1851, established a superiority 

 above all others. In the general agricultural department of the Exhibition 

 little of interest to American exhibitors was shown. The plows, with the ex- 

 ception of the English, could not compare with the American varieties, either 

 in design or workmanship. "The chief anxiety of the contrivers would seem 

 to be," says Mr. G-reeley, in the Tribune correspondence, "that each shall be 

 thoroughly guarded, at whatever cost, against running too deep into the 

 ground, though to that excess they manifest not the slightest inclination." 



" Many of the harrows exhibited were constructed with a respect for the 

 truth that the pointed, wedge-shaped tooth is radically vicious, tending to 

 compact the soil which it tries to pulverize and loosen. Harrow-teeth based 

 on the principle of the plow and the cultivator, cutting easily, lifting and turn- 

 ing over all the soil that they disturb, are evidently coming into fashion." 



A drain-tile of somewhat novel construction was exhibited. The novelty 

 consists in an independent collar or broad ring (say three inches wide) which 

 loosely covers each junction of the tile, not so much to prevent their filling up 

 with earth as to keep one from sinking below or rising above the other, so as 

 to stop the flow of water. The material is, of course, that of the tile. 



" It is unsafe," says the writer above quoted, in commenting upon the ag- 

 ricultural department of this Exhibition, "to condemn what you do not fully 

 comprehend ; but many of the European contrivances for mowing, reaping, 

 etc., by horse-power, seem absolutely puerile compared with those known hi 

 our country. So the machines for thrashing and cleaning grain here exhibited 

 seem generally such as we have for the last twenty or thirty years been su- 

 perseding by better, and some of them clumsily made and in bad condition, as 

 If they had been brought here from an old lumber-room, without cleaning." 



But a decision made in favor of one of the ten American pianos exhibited, 

 created more astonishment and surprise than the performance of the agricul- 

 tural machines. " The French people, with their limited knowledge of the 

 'half-civilized people of America,' pretend to comprehend how it is possible for 

 them to excel in the invention of such labor-saving machines as a sparse 



