THE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 587, 19 March 1851, Page 4

THE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

[From the Times, November I.]

The list of applications for space at next year’s exhibition closed yesterday, and we shall soon know what to expect in this congress of nations. Till the lists are published it will perhaps be premature to apprehend any serious omissions in the show. When all the world is invited to produce what it pleases, it is everybody’s fault if everybody is not quite satisfied. Everybody is to do what he can, and, should the result in any respect fall short of expectation, the only inference will be that time has not yet produced that which we desire, and that our imagination is running in advance of our age. We will, then, content ourselves with simply expressing a hope that the exhibition will take a useful and practical turn. We know not whether it is chiefly designed to bring out the inventive faculties, or whether it is to encourage that mixture of industry and skill that leads to the production of the most perfect article in manufacturing competition. In either case an immense public service will be done. Looking, however, to the wants of Englishmen, and indeed of the whole world, we trust that when all nations are comparing their works side by side the circle of English ideas will be somewhat enlarged. There are many .'erious desiderata in our social and domestic economies which bold invention or foreign suggestion can only supply. If the exhibition does not leave us much more comfortable than it finds us it will be a great opportunity sadly neglected. In every part of our houses there is room for improvement. We want walls combining warmth, cheapness, durability and strength, faced with a material that shall imbibe neither the damp nor the smoke, and which an occasional ablution will make as good as new. We want a substitute for the everlasting paintpot, for scaffolds, and stench. Cannot this be effected by the use of bricks, hollowed, hardened, glazed, coloured, and moulded, as the case may require ? We want fireproof constructions for our floors and our partitions, not too heavy to be carried by ordinary walls. We may learn much from the French and Germans in their windows and the fastenings thereof. The English sash, with its ropes, pullies, and weights, must be superseded at last. The Crystal Palace will itself suggest the use of glass for our roofs, and, as the year of the exhibition is, we trust, to be appropriately chosen for the repeal of the odious win-dow-tax, there is no reason why every house of any pretentions built henceforth in this country should not have a transparent roof, and be thereby enabled to utilize the space between it and the attics. The ventilation and warming of our houses demand a reform. At present we are exposed to the tortures which Milton assigns to some classes of the damned —we are suspended between a furnace and a draught, sitting before blazing fires knee deep in streams of cold air. We want plans for diffusing a temperate atmosphere through all the rooms of a house, without a fire in every one of them, which few can afford, and which is far from advisable. The English might learn a good deal from the stoves in use through the continent, especially those of Russia and Sweden. We want also a mild substitute for the feather bed and triple blanket, in which so many of our countrymen are still nightly stewed from November to May. Among other desiderata may be enumerated a more economical and effective kitchen apparatus, especially one that shall consume its own smell, or otherwise disposeof it; —a mode of internal communication which shall dispense with the bell, and, if possible, also with the journey of the servant to ask what is wanted ; window blinds that shall answer their various purposes better than either hoL land, or wire-gauze, or Venetian blinds, inside or out; plates and dishes that shall not break quite so fast; furniture that shall not compel careful housekeepers to shut out the sun ; and decorations that will stand the air of London more than three or four years. All these instances are from one department, and they serve to illustrate the scope that there is for enterprising inventors and exhibitors. Our other illustrations shall be more Tian _r . w .... MU lIUUUUUI oyy JC U 4 dress is neither sightly nor convenient. Every article of it, from the 1 hat above to the Wellington boot below, is open to serious objections. A looser style would answer its purpose better both in winter and summer, indoor or outdoor, moving or setting still. As we write we yearn for the philanthropist who will deliver us from penknives and inkglasses, by giving us a point that neither blunts nor runs dry. Oh, for a street pavement that shall be durable, noiseless, and smooth 1 If that cannot be found we must be driven to railways on our principal thoroughfares, which at present are intolerable. Were there not a dead lock every half-hour we should soon loose our hearing. Taking a wide leap into another department, we beg to instance maps

as a subject in which a reform is much needed. There is wanted a new style of engraving them, which shall exhibit with more distinctness and prominence the natural features, the cities, and the roads of the country ; in fact, one that shall give the traveller or the student a little more of that information which he learns from the handbook. Last, but not least, a great reform is wanted even in so humble an affair as children’s toys. From frequent experience we can answer for the difficulty of procuring a single article in this department that shall be good of its kind, and in general for the want of toys that shall be instructive, durable, and true, as works of imitation. Most of our children’s toys are made abroad, and one result is, that in almost every “ Noah’s ark” the domestic animals and the birds are of foreign breeds, or, perhaps, of no breed at all. Without, too, asking to change the nursery into the schoolroom, many ideas for instructive toys might be suggested. A “ fair” is a holiday making as well as a market, and children have their place in it. They will expect to find something for themselves as well as for their elders, and should not be disappointed. Some of their toys are instructive, but dangerous. Building and soldiering, trumpets and drums, guns, horses and dogs, often foreshadow too truly the career of the man. So let us have something better for the rising generation, if it can be suggested. Such are a few of our national desiderata, and whoever takes up the subject will find that the list can be almost indefinitely enlarged.