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EXHIBITION, BKITISII INDUSTRIAL. 



America has produced a greater variety of 

 reaping and mowing machines than we English 

 have done ; most of our new notions in knife, 

 or gearing, or delivery, having come a voyage 

 across the Atlantic. In the United States Court 

 we accordingly found several ingenuities of this 

 order. 



A striking object among these inventions 

 was the reaper of Mr. M'Cormick, which ad- 

 vertises itself as one of 40,000 made and sold in 

 one shop. The platform is of a quadrant figure ; 

 the reel has but three, instead of four blades, 

 the place of the fourth being occupied by a 

 rake, which by a very peculiar but really simple 

 and easy movement is made to sweep over the 

 platform, delivering the cut corn at one side. 

 Mr. Aveling, of Rochester, showed his simply- 

 contrived and practically-successful locomotive 

 for common roads, of which, it is said, forty are 

 already in constant use. 



Denmark contributed a novelty in the shape 

 of long shallow iron pans for holding milk in 

 large dairies. A screw at the farther end en- 

 ables the pan to be slightly raised for emptying, 

 and a broad blade of thin wood reaching across 

 the pan and supported by rollers running along 

 the edges of the pan, is drawn from end to end 

 when the cream is to be skimmed off the milk. 



In the Australian Court was a Victorian reap- 

 er from Melbourne, in South Australia. The 

 machine exhibited resembled the ancient Ro- 

 man reaper. A box, upon a pair of wheels, is 

 propelled by horses and a pole at the side ; the 

 forward end is armed with an iron comb, which 

 does not, however, snap off the ears of the stand- 

 ing crop, but holds them, while the rapidly re- 

 volving beaters of a drum, like that of a thresh- 

 ing machine, strip out the kernels of ripe grain. 

 The box receives the corn ; sometimes a fan 

 (driven like the drum, by wheels and a strap, 

 by the rotation of the carriage wheels) winnows 

 away the chaff, and the produce is thus collect- 

 ed ready for the market. 



CIVIL ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE, AND 

 BUILDING CONTRIVANCES. The great number 

 of the contributions by engineers were models 

 of iron bridges and viaducts, of which the 

 principle of construction is remarkable for that 

 subserviency of other considerations to one of 

 rapid completion, which is generally of im- 

 portance to shareholders. In most of these 

 models, one of the forms of the lattice-girder 

 is used, with piers likewise of iron construc- 

 tion. The Beelah Viaduct, Westmoreland, was 

 illustrated in a model It was designed by Mr. 

 T. Bouch, of Edinburgh. It is 1,000 feet long 

 and 200 feet high in the deepest part of the 

 valley, and was erected in four months. Three 

 years, say the exhibitors, would have been re- 

 quired for the erection of a viaduct of brick or 

 stone. 



Several models and photographs of suspen- 

 sion bridges were shown. The chief work was 

 a railway bridge, that of the Niagara still 

 not sufficiently appreciated, we think, by Brit- 

 ish engineers. 



An admirable series of models contributed 

 by the French Minister of Public Works, com- 

 prised representations of the sea walls of Cher- 

 bourg and the harbor of Marseilles. The sys- 

 tem of construction in both cases, if not identi- 

 cal, is closely analogous. In the greatest depths 

 where the disturbing action of the wave ceases, 

 the smaller stones are placed, or, more prop- 

 erly speaking, sunk, being allowed to assume 

 their natural inclination. Above these again 

 the larger material comes, increasing in bulk 

 in proportion to the action of the waters ; the 

 largest masses of natural stone being surmount- 

 ed, and the outer surface faced by enormous 

 blocks of concrete, of which also the superim- 

 posed masonry is principally formed. This ar- 

 tificial stone is composed of the debris from 

 the quarries mixed with hydraulic lime. 



In the instance of the creosoted woods shown 

 by Mr. J. Bethell, however, the evidence is clear 

 that piles, fourteen inches square, used at Grims- 

 by, half the substance is found to be eaten away 

 by the seaworms, in ten years or less, where 

 the pile had not been creosoted ; whilst the 

 creosoted pile, after exposure for the same time, 

 is shown to be in the original state. The col- 

 lection of specimens included sections from 

 railway sleepers after twenty-one years' con- 

 stant use ; the wood being scarcely injured. 



Clay-ware pipes, by Zeller, of Ollwiller 

 (Haut-Rhin), enamelled, and bitumenized 

 paper pipes, by Jaloureau, of Paris, of good 

 manufacture, for the conveyance of water and 

 gas, were exhibited. The bitumenized pipes 

 are favorably reported on in Paris, as regards 

 durability, after four years' trial ; and elasticity 

 is one of their advantages. 



MODELS, WEAPONS, &c. In the court devot- 

 ed to these articles the visitor could study, al- 

 most in a glance, the progress of naval archi- 

 tecture for nearly three centuries past. All 

 kinds of these models were here, from that of 

 the Great Harry down to our last and greatest 

 ship, the Warrior, with lines as fine as a Dover 

 packet. 



An important American invention was shown 

 a series of beautiful little working models of 

 the various machines used in Thompson's patent 

 for making boats by steam, which do all, even 

 to curving and bevelling the edges ; so that a 

 rough board passing in at one end of a machine 

 comes out at the other, not only curved, but 

 bevelled and planed. 



The new gun, invented by Sir William Arm- 

 strong, is a rifled breech-loading *TO- pounder, 

 but one in which the chamber ventpiece and 

 screw are entirely dispensed with. The gun 

 is built up of wrought iron coils and rifled in 

 the usual manner; but in the breech on both 

 sides two narrow openings are cut, into which 

 are fitted two wedge-shaped masses of iron 

 with handles. These, when drawn aside, have 

 openings in them corresponding to the bore of 

 the gun, which can then be seen through from 

 end to end, a hollow rifled tube. The shot 

 and powder are then inserted in the ordinary 



