

i8 93 . SCIENCE AT THE CHICAGO EXHIBITION. 343 



The scientific exhibit in the Woman's Building is, indeed, chiefly 

 confined to botanical collections of the ordinary type, the only other 

 specimens of interest being Mrs. Davidson's fossils. If Woman 

 chose to divorce herself from Man, and to have a house to herself, 

 she need not have shown herself as weaker than she is. One can 

 imagine something a great deal better than this rather amateurish 

 natural history display that poses as a scientific exhibit. Some 

 papers by Miss Cora Clarke do not represent all the scientific activity 

 oila belle Americaine; while foreign ladies seem to have been too shy 

 to put in an appearance at all. To speak only of the English ones, 

 surely the Misses Barton, Buchanan, Crane, Donald, Johnson, Raisin, 

 and others might have exhibited something, if not for the sake of 

 their sex, at least to the honour of their country. As for so eminent 

 a writer as Madame Pavlov, as she has not yet described any fossil 

 pigs, it is not to be expected that Chicago has ever heard of her. 



To include Anthropology and Ethnology under the head of 

 Natural Science, and adequately to describe their manifestations at 

 Chicago, would double the length of this article. For, in one sense, 

 the whole Fair is an Ethnological collection. There is, however, so 

 little real science about any of the exhibits, that we need only allude 

 to the more important. North American Indians are well represented 

 by both recent and prehistoric relics in the Anthropological Building, 

 where also are to be found some rare Mexican and Aztec curiosities. 

 Reproductions of burial grounds, with real live mummies, serve as a 

 Chamber of Horrors and attract a goodly crowd. These have been 

 arranged by the Bureau of Ethnology, under the skilled direction of 

 Professor Putnam, who also shows a fine series of human skulls. 

 Outside the Anthropological Building is a hill, made of tinned iron, 

 which contains an accurate copy of the caves and remains of Colorado 

 Cliff-dwellers. The Australian and African weapons and utensils, and 

 thejapanese prehistoric relics, are exceedingly interesting. Some of 

 the State Buildings and a few Foreign Buildings also contain good col- 

 lections of prehistoric relics ; but, after all, the chief Ethnological 

 interest of the Fair is living, and all around one, notably in the Midway 

 Plaisance. Turks and Egyptians, Dahomeyans and Samoans, 

 Javanese and Japanese, Chinese and Hindoos, meet and mingle in 

 good fellowship with French and Russian, German and English, 

 Italian and Swede, and with that perplexing product of Western 

 civilisation — the American negro. It is all very well for the Dryas- 

 dusts to scoff at the pleasures of the Plaisance ; but it is as superior 

 to the legitimate collections of the Exposition as a zoological 

 garden is to a row of stuffed animals, or an aquarium to a collec- 

 tion of fish-bones. Nor must we forget the forty beauties, in their 

 national costumes. If the World's Fair offered no other object of 

 interest to the naturalist, it would at least enable him to study the 

 fair of the world. 



F. A. Bather. 



