San. 26, 1882 | 
of some porcelain telegraph insulators, and battery pots 
of porous clay. Comparison with the famous show at 
Paris is naturally provoked by the public statements 
which have been made, to the effect that the Sydenham 
exhibition will be equal, if not superior to that in the 
Champs Elysées, but there is really no comparison be- 
tween the two displays. It is not merely in the number 
and variety of the exhibits that the difference is so 
marked ; but in the arrangement of the whole, and the 
intrinsic value, ingenuity, and workmanship of the articles 
exposed. ‘The Paris exhibition was a compendium of all 
that electricity had achieved since it became a science, 
and the visitor could there see within the compass of a 
single building the rough experimental apparatus with 
which all the great discoveries in electricity had been 
made, and the most powerful and magnificent effects 
which modern invention has elicited from them. Every- 
thing had been done by the exercise of French taste to 
make the exhibition as interesting and attractive as pos- 
sible. A lighthouse, a model theatre, a picture-gallery, 
had been erected to show the capabilities of the electric 
light ; the powers of the telephone were exemplified by 
means of a ‘‘salle d’audition,’’ where visitors could hear 
the music of the Grand Opera and the elocution of the 
Comédie Frangaise ; an electric boat plied on the waters 
of an ornamental basin; an electric balloon was pro- 
pelled through the air; and a great diversity of machines 
were put in motion by the electric current from sewing- 
machines and fans, up to hammers, pumps, and printing- 
presses. 
There is no good reason why the English exhibition 
should not have been equally interesting and instructive 
if it had been carried out under happier auspices. To 
begin with, the time was ill-chosen, following, as it did, 
hard on the back of the Paris one, when foreign exhibitors 
had grown tired of exhibitions, and were eager to return 
to their homes. A year hence would have been a better 
time ; and the response of foreign electricians would 
doubtless have been heartier. Moreover, the Crystal 
Palace is not well adapted for such a purpose. It is too 
far out of London, and being above all a place of enter- 
tainment, is out of keeping with a scientific exhibition. 
The truth is that there is a clear need of a large building 
in London for exhibition purposes. We have no Palais 
de l’ Industrie as yet, and hence we are obliged to hold 
our industrial exhibitions in such places as the Agricul- 
tural Hall, which has by no means a central site, or the 
narrow galleries surrounding the Horticultural Society’s 
Gardens, where the apparatus of the Smoke Abatement 
Exhibition is now very inconveniently crowded. We 
require for London a commodious and elegant glass and 
iron structure, of a permanent kind, situated somewhere 
in the West End, either in Hyde Park or the Green 
Park, where it would be readily accessible to all. Until 
we have such a building, our exhibitions, in this age of 
exhibitions, will never show to good advantage... 
Taking the Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition for 
what it is, and not for what it might have been, we shall 
still find plenty to interest us there. The four great divi- 
sions of applied electricity, telegraphy, telephony, electric 
lighting, and the transmission of motive power by elec- 
tricity, will be represented, and in telegraphy and electric 
lighting very worthily represented on the whole. Great 
Britain has played a leading part in the development of 
the telegraph, and the fruits of her enterprise and in- 
genuity are visible on the Post Office stall, and the 
exhibits of the great submarine cable companies. The 
Wheatstone automatic instrument, which is the most rapid 
telegraph for overland lines, is shown at work by the 
Post Office, and the Eastern Telegraph Company exhibit 
Sir William Thomson’s beautiful Siphon Recorder, which 
is the finest apparatus yet invented for receiving messages 
through deep-sea cables. The stalls we have mentioned, 
together with that of the War Office, are situated in the 
NATORE 
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great nave of the Palace; and the galleries at the west 
end are also set apart for various exhibits. Fully one- 
half of these are in their places, and a number of inter- 
esting objects are on view. We shall have occasion to 
refer to some of these stalls at greater length in subsequent 
articles, but at present they are incomplete. 
The display of electric lamps promises to be very good, 
partly owing to the magnificent vista offered by the grand 
aisle of the Palace, and the varied objects below, such as 
ferns, flowers, statuary, and gaily-coloured wares, Visitors 
will have a rare opportunity of seeing how brightly the 
various tints appear in the electric light, more especially 
the green of foliage, owing to the prevalence of actinic 
rays in the electric arc. It is for this reason that land- 
scape paintings appear doubly natural when lighted by 
the rays of a “‘lampe soleil” or Werderman lamp; and 
on the other hand that flesh tints are apt to seem too 
purplish. The purely incandescent light such as that ot 
Swan or Edison has a yellowish tinge, which produces a 
scenic effect more resembling the deadening of gas light, 
and it is therefore not so well adapted to light a picture- 
gallery, or the tableau of the stage, as the electric arc or 
Drummond limelight. 
The entire nave will be lighted in sections by arc lights, 
of different kinds, such as the Siemens’, Brush, Jablochkoff, 
Pilsen, Gravier, and Crompton lamps. The incandescent 
lights of Swan, Lane-Fox, and Edison will be shown in 
the courts and enclosures within the Palace ; for example, 
the Alhambra Court, which will be lighted by a crystal 
chandelier of Lane-Fox lamps hung over the fountain, 
and the Entertainment Court, which is now being fitted 
up with a splendid chandelier of a hundred Edison lamps 
of sixteen candle-power. This brilliant fount of light re- 
sembles an enormous basket of flowers, tulips and con- 
volvuli, each arching over towards the observer and 
displaying between the coloured petals a luminous globe 
as if it were an enlarged pistil. The stems of the flowers 
are of gilt brass, the petals are of pearl and opalescent 
glass ; while the pistil is of course the pear-shaped bulb 
of the incandescent lamp. The Concert Room has been 
lighted every evening for some time past by Edison lamps 
swung in festoons from the pillars, or suspended in stars 
undey the galleries, and clustered in two chandeliers hung 
from the roof. One of these is a small copy of the larger 
flower basket in the Entertainment Court, and the other 
is a sac of crystal lustres gleaming here and there with 
lamps. Altogether the designs of these fittings reflect 
great credit on Messrs. Verity and Co. of Covent 
Garden, 
EDWARD WILLIAM BINNEY, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
apes eminent geologist was born in 1812 at Morton, in 
Nottinghamshire. He was descended from a long- 
lived and robust stock of men, very few generations taking 
the family back long before the times of the Great Rebellion 
One of the American branch, the Hon. Horace Binney, 
with an interest in strange contrast with the indifference 
commonly felt about such matters in this country, has taken 
much pains in tracing the origin of his ancestry. Perhaps 
it will satisfy most persons to know that the father, 
Thomas Binney, born in the year 1762, was a much 
respected gentleman, diligent in business, and of the 
strictest integrity. He wasa maltster, often travelling to 
Manchester, where one of his principal customers was the 
grandfather of the writer of this article. He died in 1836. 
Young Binney received his education in a grammar school, 
conducted on principles of severe discipline, so different 
from the modern 7¢gz7ze. He then served his apprentice- 
ship to a solicitor in Chesterfield. Other pursuits soon 
occupied his attention, but his legal knowledge was after- 
wards of the greatest service to him in the commercial 
portion of his career. 
From an early age he was a keen observer of the 
