y be supposed to have followed some such
arrangement in his storage of zoological zones and families. He had
the additional aid of decks; which our assemblers of the universe
decline, small balconies of observation being the only galleries of
the Main Building. Those at the different stages of the central towers
will be highly attractive to students who prefer the general to the
particular, or who, exhausted for the time, retire to clear their
brains from the dust of detail and muster their faculties for another
charge on the vast army of art. From this perch one may survey mankind
from China to Peru through "long-drawn aisles" flooded with mellow
light, the subdued tones of the small surface that glass leaves open
to the paint-brush relieved with a few touches of positive color to
destroy monotony. These are assisted by the colored glass louvres,
which have no other artistic merit, but serve, where they are placed
over the side-entrances, to indicate the nation to whose department
belongs that particular vomitorium.

Four miles of water- and drainage-pipe underlie the twenty-one and a
half acres of plank floor in this building. The pillars and trusses
contain thirty-six hundred tons of iron. The contract for it was
awarded in July, 1874, and it was completed in eighteen months, being
ready for the reception of goods early in January last. The cost
was $1,420,000, and in mechanical execution the iron-, glass-
and wood-work is pronounced fully equal to either of the British
structures and superior to those of the Continent. In economy of
material for producing a given result it is probable that the iron
trusses and supports of the English buildings are as much excelled as
the iron bridges of this country surpass those of Great Britain in the
combination of lightness with strength. Our metal is better, and its
greater cost has united with the scarcity of labor which so stimulated
ingenuity in other departments of industry to enforce tenuity of form.
Foreign engineers wonder that our viaducts stand, but somehow they do
stand.

The turrets and eagles of galvanized sheet iron, not being intended
to support anything but jokes, need not be criticized as part of
the construction. The tiled pavements of the vestibules, designed to
sustain, besides criticism of the he-who-walks-may-read order, the
impact of the feet of all nations, are more important. Their pattern
is very fair--their solidity will doubtless stand the test. The