EXPOSITION OF 1867. 
895 
Machine tools ,—In this class England and America still lead 
the world ; those by American inventors, so far as represented, 
being entitled to the highest rank. It is only by the means of 
precision made possible by the aid of such tools, that 
machinery itself as well as the countless products of the 
machinic arts have attained to their present high degree of 
perfection. 
Great Public Worhs .—This is an age of gigantic undertak¬ 
ings. Improvements are projected on a colossal scale and ex¬ 
ecuted with a corresponding energy and skill. 
Several of the great works now in progress, or recently com¬ 
pleted, to wit: the Suez Canal, the Mt. Cenis Tunnel and 
Eailway, the Chicago Tunnel, and the Pacific Railway, were 
illustrated by models and charts, with statistics and estimates. 
No needed improvement seems at this day beyond either the 
conception or the achievement of man. The bridging of 
mighty rivers, the sending of railway trains through or over 
vast mountain ranges, the opening of navigation between great 
seas separated by the rocky limbs or loins of continents, the 
supply of thirsty cities with pure water from remote distances 
and through vast subterranean and submarine channels, the 
supplying the body of the globe with electric nerves for inter¬ 
national communication, and the improvisement of vast navies 
of iron ships with armaments such as Neptune and Yulcan 
never dreamed of in their day, are but as gymnastic sports for 
the mechanical athletes of our wonderful times. 
The application of steam, and the improved metallurgic 
processes, to which I have already referred, and which are 
eventually to make the steel of the future cheaper than the cast 
iron of to-day, lie back of all these vast achievements and in 
their further development are destined to render yet greater 
ones possible. 
Manufactures .—Here the field is too wide for even a glance 
in this report, at the numberless branches whose advancement 
would require notice. It may be remarked of manufactures, 
generally, however, that, in nearly all classes, in which form is an 
