AS INSTBUMBNTS OP EDUCATION. 9 



enamels, engraved jewellery. Here also were portable fire-arms, travel- 

 ling apparatus and toys. Life-size and life-like figures, carefully dressed 

 in the costumes of diflPerent countries, and of various provinces of 

 different countries, literally ''from China to Peru," were set up in 

 divers places within this gallery. The large groups of real precious 

 stones of every name, and of jewel-sets in every variety of form, contri- 

 buted, not only by numerous manufacturers, but by imperial, royal and 

 other personages in different parts of Europe, were quite fairylandish 

 in character. Here, for one thing, was to be seen the Sancy diamond, 

 once ih& property of our James II., and sold by him to Louis XIV. 

 for £25,000. In another place I remember a cluster of unwrought 

 emeralds, shown as found in a Kussian mine — a number of long, thick, 

 six-sided crystals, of a pure green colour, bristling out irregularly 

 from the sides of a great block of the whitish matrix in which they 

 had been formed. 



Another gallery was now to be examined. This was entitled the 

 Gallery of Eaw Materials ; in French " Mati^res Premieres." 



This, though the least showy, was possibly the most instructive of all 

 the galleries to the student. Here the observant traveller, with a 

 design of increasing his practical acquaintance with the products and 

 applications of Natural Science, would have reaped a rich harvest. 

 Here, if the visitor had the time, he could be deliberate, and be but 

 slightly disturbed ; for generally speaking the crowd was not great in 

 this zone of the Palace. Here were collections and specimens of rocks, 

 minerals and ores, ornamental stones, marble, serpentine, onyx, hard 

 rocks, refractory substances, earths and clay, sulphur, rock salt, salt 

 from salt springs, bitumen and petroleum, specimens of fuel in its 

 natural state and carbonized, compressed coal, metals in a crude state 

 pig-iron, iron, steel, cast steel, copper, lead, silver, zinc, alloys, products 

 from the washing and refining precious metals, gold beating, electro-- 

 metallurgy, objects gilt, silvered or coated with copper or steel by 

 galvanic process, products of the working of metals, rough castings, 

 bells, wrought iron, iron for special purposes, sheet iron and tin plates, 

 iron plates for casing ships, copper, lead and zinc sheets, manufactured 

 metal, blacksmith's work, wheels, tires, unwelded pipes, chains, wire- 

 drawing, needles, pins, wire work, and wire gauze, perforated sheet 

 iron, hardware, ironmongery, edge tools, copper and tin ware, other 

 metal manufactures. Such a detail as this of objects, spread over only 

 a very small portion of the Gallery of Mati^res Premieres, gives an idea 



