THE WISCONSIN FARMER.   49



Vroducts of other countries, and have no pro-



per place in the British court, except in the
branch of manufactures, we shall content our-
self with this bare mention.

  THE COLLECTIW( OF WOOLS shown by the
Royal Agricultural Society of England was
very fine--Vver an hundred entire fleeces, each

representatives of some distinctive breed, cross,
grade or quality. They were handsomely put
up with labels, and so situtatett as to be acces-
sible to thtse who would carefully examine

thent. Great Britaiti ranks amtong the first

wool growing countries of the world, and yet
her annual imports exceed one hundred and
twenty-six millions of pouttds of foreign wools

-so great is the amount consumned in the thott-
sands of her teeming factories.
  .John Bull is a staunch, stubbed, practical

fellow, caring much for the economies of life,

and, hence is better pleased with those wools
that will make a strong, stubbed fabric than
with those alone adapted to the production of

a light, fine and handsome cloth, such ais is

most popular in France and America. The
South-Downs, Leicesters and the middle-wool-

producing sheep generally are, therefore, most
popular in Great Britain. This truth was il-
lustrated by the collection of wools above men-
tioned.

   Burttstt StLK was also on exhibition, but

not in either amount or quality to justify more
than a bare mention.
   All things considered, the Agricultural

 branch of the British Department of the Great
 Exhibition, though interesting, and, in Somic
 respects, gratifying to those whose credit wat
 most involved, was, nevertheless, exreedinglS

 meagre, when viewed with reference to the vasi
 agricultural resources of a mighty kingdom
 two-thirds of whose revenue is derived frott
 this first and paramount brancht of human in
 dustry.
            tBRITISH MANUFACTURES.

   Hitherto we have been, as it were, in th4

 vestibule of the vast temple wherein are dis
 played the glories of the British Departmen
 -stumbling our way over the rough, though
 ,.tel, yn~Anets of Brittania's varied and inex



taustible mines, and stopping for a moment to



nlost essential representatives of her forests
Lad fields.

The more intelligent and the earnest seeker
Lfter knowledge has not been impatient of this
hturried and necessarily dry detail, because it

"as shown to him the de~ep and solid founda-

tions of a vast empire, whose power and sway
are, therefore, first among all the nations of
the earth. To him and to all we open now the

great portal witich reveals the interior muagni-
ficence.
  Let us stand here a muoment in silence with
uncovered heads, awe-inspired, and lifted up

by a new conscioutsness of the almost infinite
possibilities of man!
  But we are not under the grand Iomie with

power to sweep, at one glance, over the vast

area, within which multitudes of nations com-

pare their greater or lesser resources and pro-
gress in the arts of civilization. Another month
and that privilege tuay be ours.
      PRtODUC'TS oF CHEMICAtL PROeRSARSR
  Looking first about us, we are in the midst
of the weird wonders of the Genius of Chem-
istry.
  Acids.-Boracic, made from P'eruvian borate
of lime, Thibitian and Persian tineal, (biborate

of soda), direct from the boiling:' vapory la-
goons of Tuscany; aqua-fortis from the nitre
of South America: hydrochloric, from common
salt; and every other, with sulphu'ric, king of
them all, at the head.
  Alkalies and Alkaline earths, with their mul-
titudes of salts-offspring of their marriage

with the great family of acids, and each begot-
ten for some important office in chemic or phar-
maceutic art. Even a very concise account of
all of them would fill many volumes.
   Large quantities of magnificent crystals of

carbonate of soda induce a few words of com-
ment, a. the manufacture of the salts of soda
constitutes so attractive a feature of this

branch of the Exhibition. So late as 1820 all
the soda of commerce was made by burning a
certain plant-the salsola soda-found and cul-

tivated on the coasts of Spain, Ireland and



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