The daily gazette., 1878-09-17
OUR PARIS LETTER.
The Canadian TrOphy-Tron and
81 steel at Champ de Mars.

MAN GETS AFREE
RIDEIN PARIS.
From our regular correspondent.
frt PARIS, Sept. 9TH, 1873.
The Canadian trophy, towering up a
hundred feet under the northwestern
dome, is an immense structure, composed
of the timber of the country; and is sur
rounded by specimens of work done in it,
and by grand collection of ornamental
woods; and may state, once for all, that
| nearly all Of the English colonies have
sent specimens of their timber and orna-
mental woods, which have been prepared
and set up with great care. And the
same remark will apply to many of the
geological and natural history collections
especially of Canada, which has separ-
ate list of the former class. All the colo
nies exhibit stuffed birds and animals /;
and generally, they are well set up in the
usual manner. But in the Canadian de-
partment novel and remarkable plan
has been adopted, the carcasses of deer
| and other animals and birds are suspend
ed by the feet as in market or shop,and
present admirable tableaux of "dead
game" while fish lie on something re-
| sembling herbage, and look as natural as
| If they had come out of the sea OF river,
an hour or two since only. The trophy
contains examples of nearly every class
in the collection, and visitors wind up
and down its staircase continually,
neither deferred by the black bear that
stands sentinel at one door, nor by the
white one which performs the same duty
at the other.
People who take in hand an inspection
of the Paris Exhibition in the expecta-
tion that it will furnish them with faith
full reflex of the present aspect of the
manufacture of iron and steel, are not
only likely to be largely disappointed,
but are certain, If influenced in their
judgment only by what they see in the
Champ de MaIs, to be led to altogether
incorrect conclusions. England, the
leading country in all that relates to the
metallurgy of iron, is very inadequately
| represented; America, the next in i'm
portance, comes in far short of putting
| forth its real strength that it had much
better have left itself altogether out of
the reckoning Germany, the third great
est representative of iron and steel, is in
the same position as America; and Bel
GUM has been content to leave itself
very largely in the hands of one firm
| which, however, has worthily discharged
the trust. On the other hand, it will be
found that such countries as Russia,
| Austria and Sweden, with natural re-
sources and development that only entitle
them to a place in the third rank of the
European family, have done more in the
way of asserting their claims to recognl-
ton as industrial powers than might have
been expected from them, even if they
had been much more literally endowed
by nature, and geographically within
easier reach of the Champ de Mars.
But after these considerations have
been duly discounted, the collective ex-
hibts of iron and steet present education
al facilities and scientific memorabilia
quite as edtable, and probably, on the
whole, much more complete, than any
anticedent exhibition. England and
America have had numerous opportunities,
of which they have taken full advantage,
of showing to the world their capabilities
and resorces in this sphere of industrial
effort; and heretofore the race has been
so far to the swift, that the right OF Eng.
, land to pre-eminence has hardly beer
challenged. 1t is a fact much too motor
lioust to be gainsaid that the pride of plact
lenioyed by Great Britain has made heI
disregard the threats of foreign competi
ton, and it is perhaps, due more to theil
insular prejudice and contempt of danger
than to aught else, that English firms
have come so far short of their last efiorti
in the present Exhibition. But the ex
ftent and character of foreign competition
have been brought very near and made
. uncomfortable apparent to the English
: industrials, who have never until nov
-, ceased to believe in their manifest desti
ny as ''the workshop of the WORLD" ant
/ must, unless they are as far from wisdom
! as an ostrich, persuade them that thei
! energies must more than ever be taxed Il
breast the rising tide of foreign com
, petition.
ell A more complete or a more elaborat,
e series of iron and steel was probably
$ never brought together than that contrib
uted by France to her own exposition
\ 1878. This may, indeed, be regarded a
. the very first opportunity France has en-
ioyed of showing to the rest of the worl
her relative position in the race of indus
trial preferment. Neither in her ow1
exhibitions of 1866 and 1863 nor in tn
English exhibitions of 1851 and 1So
did she come largely to the front in mat
tiers metallurgical, and the enormou
drain made upon her resources by tn
war left her in the background at the eS
hibition of Vienna and Philadelphia
But to-day she proves to the rest of tn
world, that in spite of the demoraliza
I ton and disturbance of industry, cause
u by the misfortunes that eliminated il
Sedan, and notwithstanding the conse
quent loss of eleven of her princlpa
ironworks. in Alsace and Lorraine, reI
I resenting the tranference to the Zollve
. rein of threefourths of the iron produc
ton of the old French department of tn
NIoselle, she has in this, as in all othe
n indications of material progress, deye
oped amazing recuperative energy, an
become a formidable rival of nation