The Colonial and Indian Exhibition

Abstract

CANADA.—This section of the Exhibition will be remembered chiefly for its agricultural machinery in motion, its fur, and agricultural trophies, and its large collection of furniture. The collection of fruits in the agricultural trophy has probably never before been equalled either in number, variety, or perfection of preservation, the colours of the several fruits being extremely well preserved in various solutions, such as dilute sulphurous acid for the lighter coloured fruits or salicylic acid for the darker ones. Besides these, however, there were numerous exhibits which, though less imposing to the general visitor, were of considerable interest, such, for instance, as the collection of timbers, and manufactures therefrom, photographs of American timber-trees, &c. The enormous sizes of many of the American Coniferae were well illustrated by magnificent planks of such woods as the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), some sixteen feet high and about ten feet in diameter, large slabs of hemlock spruce (Tsuga canadensis), also enormous logs of black walnut (Juglans nigra), and many others. Perhaps the most compact and interesting collection of timbers, however, was that from New Brunswick, where the woods were arranged so as to form a kind of design, the lower or basal portion being formed of trunks of trees, with their barks remaining, about three feet high, over this were arranged sections of the wood in frames composed of the young branches with the bark on; and above these, again, panels of the same wood as shown below, cut longitudinally and with a cross section at the base, both polished to show the grain or figure, and on the panel of each wood was painted a very good representation of a spray or branch of the plant itself. Each specimen was properly named, so that the whole thing was very complete. The series of photographs before alluded to are correct representations of the tree flora, each photograph being framed with the wood of the tree illustrated. The general use of the bark and wood of the cedar of British Columbia (Thuja gigantea), for useful and ornamental articles, was well shown in the exhibits of mats, native head-dresses, masks cut from the solid wood and grotesquely painted, spoons, whistles.