350 
The Health Exhibition. 
[June, 
V. THE HEALTH EXHIBITION. 
NCE more South Kensington — the concrete, not the 
abstract — is en fete, swept and garnished. Once 
more she has thrown open her gates ; and the exhi- 
bitor and the getter-up of exhibitions, the critic and the 
would-be purchaser, the lounger and the consumer of re- 
freshments err through her mazes. 
After a first and not un-admiring glance at the varied and 
animated scene, our next thought was astonishment at the 
ingenuity displayed by exhibitors in bringing their articles 
into some sort of quasi-conneCtion with public health. We 
feel convinced that if that often-cited personage, the “intel- 
ligent stranger,” could be suddenly transported from the 
ends of the earth and set down in one of the courts or the 
galleries without having seen any of the advertisements or 
prospectuses of the display, he would be utterly unable to 
guess that it was in any especial way connected with health. 
Let us take the entrance-hall devoted to fcod-produCts. 
That food is a very important faCtor of health no one will 
dispute. But what do we see here ? There are certainly 
some most interesting exhibits. The stall of an Austrian 
Vineyard Company displays the dreaded Phylloxera in its 
different stages of development, and roots of the vine suf- 
fering under the visitation. There are also specimens of 
wines undergoing morbid changes. There is another stall 
showing the varieties of coffee grown in different soils and 
climates. There are similar exhibits of teas. Here the 
public will find something to learn and remember. Very 
near at hand is the display of the British Bee-keepers’ Asso- 
ciation. Here we see preserved specimens of Ligurian, 
Syrian, and Cyprian bees, hybrids, queens, drones and 
workers, fruitful workers, and the progeny of the latter. 
There are cells of each class of bee in the successive stages 
of development of the larvae. There are, too, specimens of 
honey. One kind, of a whitish colour, was labelled as col- 
lected exclusively from white clover. Another, of a pecu- 
liarly rich golden tinge, was from lucerne, — a plant dear to 
every entomologist, on account of its attraction for numbers 
of inseCts. Still we feel a little doubt as to how the bees 
can be persuaded to devote themselves entirely to one kind 
of flower. 
