him. The Hodder is considered the best angling water, particularly for morts and sprods, the local names for white or sea trout, mort being the full-grown fish, sprod the younger. The Calder is stated to be so polluted by dye and print works, that the fish in it have been nearly, if not totally destroyed. This destruction is of recent occurrence and has excited much dissatisfaction; but we think that the manufacturers, if they are willing to do so, may take measures by which it may be mitigated, if not entirely corrected. By calling attention to the subject means may be suggested by which the excessive pollution that has injured so many rivers may be avoided. The consideration indeed of this subject is of great importance, and extends far beyond the mere preservation of fish.

Some foul water from print works is allowed to flow into streams connected with the Little Ribble. We visited one called the Primrose Factory, near Whalley, and the proprietors expressed their desire to avoid doing injury, if reasonably within their power as regarded expense; but said they could not at present see their way in the matter.

TEIFI.

The Teifi is seventy miles long. The estuary is fished with draught nets, about sixteen in number; bag nets are said to have been used on the adjacent coast at Aberforth. A fixed net has been used near the bridge at Cardigan, and others in the vicinity, called Jackass nets. The fishery is public, no private right having to our knowledge been claimed or exercised. In the fresh water from Llechrhyd to Cenarth Bridge the river is fished with coracle nets; it was stated to the Commissioners in 1860, that there were about 300 coracles thus employed, which would represent as many men who claim that portion of the river as their own, grounding their right upon long and undisturbed usage. By means of a natural ledge of rock above Cenarth Bridge a salmon trap is used, for which rent is paid to the proprietor; above this the rights of fishing are exercised by the proprietors of the land, and we are not aware that the public have asserted any claim to them. The obstructions on the Teifi are few and not very formidable; the first is caused by rubbish thrown into the river from the slate quarries at Kilgerran, a short distance above Cardigan Bridge; many complaints have been made of this abuse, and the Admiralty have been applied to, as guardians of the navigation, to have the evil remedied, and a report was made by Captain Washington to that Board condemnatory of the practice; but it is still continued, and the impediment so caused is decidedly detrimental to the free passage of fish. The next obstructions are at Cenarth, and consist of the natural rock before mentioned, and a mill weir; the next, and last of any amount, is a mill weir at Newcastle Emlyn. These impediments are not great, and by the application of ladders would be easily corrected. The abuses of the Teifi have been very great. The close season heretofore fixed did not commence until the 3rd of November, and we believe that it was not observed. A system has prevailed of kippering or curing salmon in the latter part of the season, and the information we have received tends to show that salmon have been captured whenever they could be obtained for this purpose.

The report was signed by William J. Ffennell and Frederick Eden, inspectors of fisheries.

THE EXHIBITION OF 1862.

Report of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1862.

On the 14th February, 1862, a commission was issued by her Majesty the Queen to the Right Hon. the Earl Granville, Lord President of the Council, the Marquis of Chandos, and Messrs. Thomas Baring, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and Thomas Fairbairn, in which it was recited that the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, of which the Prince Consort was president, did, previously to the year 1851, establish and cause to be held, from time to time, exhibitions of the products of industry and art, which exhibitions resulted in or led to the holding of the exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in the year 1851, and which last-named exhibition was attended with great success and public advantage; and that the said society, in order to promote the objects for which it was incorporated, was desirous that facilities should be afforded for holding, from time to time, international exhibitions of the products of industry and art; and that many of the members of that society and others were desirous that such an international exhibition should be holden in the metropolis in the year 1862, or so soon after as conveniently may be. That the same was approved of by her Majesty, and that a Royal charter of incorporation was granted to the said commissioners to conduct and manage the same, making the commissioners one body politic and corporate, capable of suing and being sued. By such charter, power was given to such commissioners to borrow sums not exceeding in the whole 250,000l., to obtain a guarantee fund, and to enter into an arrangement with the commissioners for the Exhibition of 1861, for holding the exhibition on a portion of the estate of those commissioners at Kensington Gore, in accordance with the arrangements already made with them by the Society of Arts; and to expend the sum of 50,000l. on buildings of a permanent character adapted for such exhibitions to be given on a lease to the Society of Arts. Should a loss attend the said undertaking irrespective of the value of the permanent buildings, then the Society of Arts, with a view to obtain the lease of the same, according to the arrangement, should have the power to bear and sustain the loss, so as to enable the commissioners to pay all the remaining debts and liabilities of the corporation, including the guaranteed debt. But should the society not be willing to undertake the same, then, that the commissioners should sell the permanent buildings and discharge all the debts with the proceeds. Should the undertaking leave a profit, irrespective of the permanent buildings, such buildings shall be left standing for the Society of Arts, and the commissioners would pay, if so desired by the Society of Arts, a sum not exceeding 10,000l. to the commissioners of 1851, as a consideration for their reserving a site of sixteen acres for an exhibition to be held in 1872 on the lands belonging to such commissioners; and if any surplus profit should remain the same to be applied to such purposes connected with the encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce, as shall be determined by the guarantors at a meeting to be called · for that purpose.

On the 20th April, 1863, the commissioners reported the result of their labours as follows:

The remarkable success of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the valuable information afforded by it as to the state of the manufacturing industry

of different nations at the time when it took place, made it obvious that a renewal of so important an undertaking would be called for at no distant date, for the purpose of testing the advance made in the industrial arts in the intervening period. Not only did the Society of Arts (to whose efforts, under the wise guidance and direction of their Royal president, the Exhibition of 1851 owed its origin), in their original application, address, in 1849, to her Majesty's Government, for the issue of a Royal commission for the conduct of that Exhibtion, point out the importance of establishing similar exhibitions periodically, but their utility has for a long time past been recognized, and practically exemplified, in a neighbouring country, with the happiest results to industry. No real measure of the benefits resulting from the great experiment of 1851 could be taken without instituting the comparison which its repetition could alone afford. Positive evil might result from a single unrepeated exhibition, in which the awards of juries had affixed that stamp of excellence to the articles exhibited, which other and more meritorious articles, subsequently produced, were not in a position to receive, in the absence of similar means of rewarding them.

The Society of Arts, therefore, in 1858 and 1859, turned their attention to the measures that would have to be taken with a view to the establishment of a second great International Exhibition in this country; and the council of that society, in the first instance, put themselves in communication, on the subject, with the commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851; a body which, on the one hand, owed its continued existence as a corporation to the success with which it had conducted the undertaking entrusted to it by the favour of her Majesty, and which, on the other hand, was the owner of a large estate purchased with the profits of that Exhibition, and on which it was supposed that an appropriate site could be found for a second International Exhibition.

The original proposal of the Society of Arts was that the second Great Exhibition should take place in 1861, or ten years subsequently to the first one, as it was considered by that body that no period was so well adapted as a decennial one for those purposes of comparison which successive exhibitions in the same country afford; whilst it was not likely that producers and manufacturers could be induced to make the great efforts required to enable them to compete on such occasions at shorter intervals than ten years.

The outbreak of the Italian War in the spring of 1859, however, rendered it expedient to postpone the further prosecution of the scheme at that moment; but on the restoration of peace, in the summer of the same year, the council of the society felt themselves once more in a position to move in the matter, although the year in which it was proposed to hold the Exhibition was necessarily changed from 1861 to 1862. They accordingly took steps to ascertain two important points, which the commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 considered as indispensable preliminaries, viz., whether "the scheme of the proposed Exhibition met with the general sympathy and support of the public to an extent sufficient to warrant a reasonable confidence of success," and also whether "the necessary funds would be forthcoming for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the Exhibition, until those expenses were met by the receipts derivable from it.”

It appeared to the Society of Arts that the necessary information on both those points could be best obtained by inviting subscriptions to an exhibition guarantee fund of not less than 250,000l., it being thought that in no

way could the real wishes of the community be so well tested as by an appeal which threw upon the public the exclusive pecuniary risk of so vast an undertaking, from which, at the same time, no pecuniary advantage was to be derived by them. The appeal thus made by the society met with a success exceeding those expectations; and when they next addressed the commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, in the month of June, 1860, upwards of 450 names had already been promised to the proposed guarantee fund, for a total amount exceeding 300,000l. At a subsequent period, the number of signatures increased to above 1100, and the amount subscribed to upwards of 450,000l. Reference was here made to the arrangements between the commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 and the Society of Arts for a site for the Exhibition, and to measures taken for securing trustees, &c.

The formal guarantee deed had been duly executed to the extent of 250,000l. by the 15th of March, 1860; but it was eventually signed by 1157 subscribers, to the amount of 451,070., and on the security of which the governor and the directors of the Bank of England agreed to advance us the sum of 250,000l. for the purposes of the Exhibition.

THE BUILDING.

The two important questions of the site to be occupied by the Exhibition, and the means of providing the requisite funds in anticipation of the receipts from the admission of visitors, were virtually settled, as we have already shown, before we agreed to undertake the management of the Exhibition. The main difficulty-viz., that of securing the erection of a suitable building, which should be ready at a sufficiently early date in the year 1862 for the reception of the objects to be exhibited, had to be dealt with at the very outset of our proceedings.

The arrangements that had been made by the Society of Arts with the commissioners of 1851 precluded us from entertaining the idea of erecting a building of precisely the same character as that which had been found to answer the requirements of the first Great Exhibition. Not only were pictures to be included in the Exhibition of 1862, but the charter, under which the Exhibition was to be conducted, pointed to the ultimate establishment of periodical Exhibitions, on the site that had been primarily secured for the purposes of that year.

Under these circumstances, and considering that the expenditure at regularly recurring intervals of sums ranging from 150,000l. to 200,000l. on the erection of temporary buildings, to be removed after they had answered the purposes of single exhibitions, appeared to be unjustifiable, we deemed it necessary to contemplate the erection of a building which should possess more of the elements of permanence than a mere structure of glass and iron; and which, if the results of the Exhibition were such as to justify the anticipations of its promoters, might be made available for future gatherings of a similar character.

We felt, moreover, that to enable us to secure the co-operation of the various patrons of art, to whom we should have to appeal for assistance in the formation of a collection of pictures, it would be necessary to satisfy them that the building, in which we proposed to exhibit their valuable property, would be of such a character as to prevent the possibility of damage being done to their contributions from the effects of our variable climate. We were advised that, to guard against all danger from this source, it was

essential, first of all, that the picture galleries should be solidly constructed in brick; and, secondly, with a view to their being thoroughly dried before the pictures were hung on the walls, that they should be roofed in by the end of November, 1861, at the latest-i. e., in less than ten months from the date at which our charter was issued.

We were fully satisfied, as experience has since proved, of the possibility of finding contractors in this country who would execute all the required works within the time available; but to enable them to do so, it was necessary that the plans for the building should be issued at an early date. It naturally occurred to us that we should endeavour to obtain such plans by public competition; but the experience of 1851 was not encouraging on this point. On referring to the first report of the commissioners of 1851, we found that the Building Committee was constituted in the month of January, 1850; that they recommended the issue of an invitation to architects, calling on them to offer their suggestions for the general arrangements of the buildings and premises required for the Exhibition; that, though less than a month was allowed for the preparation of such plans, no fewer than 233 designs and specifications were sent in, none of which, however, were suitable for the purpose; that the committee, numbering amongst its members several most eminent architects and engineers, then prepared a plan, which, though open to many grave objections, was accepted under the pressure of time; that this plan, however, was at once set aside on the appearance of a design submitted to the commissioners. from an unprofessional source; and that, though estimates for carrying out this design were presented within a few days after its first conception, it was not till the 26th of July, or six months after the date of the nomination of the committee, that the tender of the contractors for the erection of the building in which the Exhibition was eventually held was adopted by the commissioners.

So serious a delay might not have again occurred, but, on a careful consideration of all the circumstances, we came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to carry out the design of the Exhibition as originally submitted to us, and to open it in the year 1862, if it were necessary to have recourse to a general competition.

While we were considering how far it would be possible to obtain designs from a select list of competitors, it was reported to us that there was already in existence a plan of a building, adapted for a great exhibition of works of art and industry, which had been prepared with special reference to the particular site that had been granted for the Exhibition of 1862. We were informed that the author of this plan, Captain Fowke, R.E., an officer of skill and experience in the art of construction, who had been employed by her Majesty's Government in the British department of the Paris Exhibition of 1855, had framed it so as to meet the many practical defects which experience had shown to exist in the buildings both in Hyde Park and the Champs Elysées.

On examining Captain Fowke's plan we found that it was in many respects not only well adapted for the purpose for which we should require it, but also for the uses to which the building might hereafter be turned, in the event of its being left permanently on the site. Its principal features, moreover, were of a striking character, and of themselves likely to form an attractive part of the Exhibition.

Having received a favourable report from the professional members of