It would be scarcely fair to neglect altogether the English annex in which all the agricultural implements are exhibited, nor that which contains its carriages. So much commercial intercourse, so many journals published in the respective countries, have made each pretty well acquainted with the agricultural machines and methods of the other. The principal difference is in the splendid plant for steam-ploughing exhibited by Fowler & Son and by Aveling & Porter, and in the great number and variety of the machines and apparatus for preparing food for animals--chaff-cutters, oat- and bean-bruisers and crushers, oilcake-grinders, boilers and steamers for feed and mills for rough grinding of grain.
A shed by the annex contains two curious machines for working stone--one a dresser, belonging to Brunton & Triers, which has a large wheel and a number of planetary cutters whose disk edges as they revolve cut the stone against which they impinge. The other machine, by Weston & Co., is for planing stone mouldings. The stone-drills are in the same annex; also the Smith and the Hardy brakes, the former of which is the European rival of the Westinghouse, acting upon the vacuum principle, and already in possession of so many of the lines in Europe that it proves a serious competitor.
Perhaps nothing in the French Exposition excites more surprise in the minds of those who are conversant with technical matters than the immense advance of the French since 1867 in the matter of machinery. The simple statement of the names of the exhibitors, their residences and the subject-matter occupies a large volume, and the quality and variety are equal to the quantity.
Reference has been made to the web perfecting printing-machine in the English section, but quite a number are shown in the French department, three of them by Marinoni of Paris, one of which prints the journal _La France_, eighteen thousand an hour. It prints, cuts, counts, folds and piles the papers. Another by the same maker prints twenty thousand an hour of the _Weekly Dispatch_ (English paper), and counts and piles them in heaps of one hundred each. A third works on the _Petit Journal_, printing forty thousand per hour with two forms. Alauzet & Co. have also a web perfecting press, _à double touche_, for illustrated papers and book-printing. This wets, prints, cuts, counts and folds in octavo four thousand per hour of super-royal size. They also show a double railway topographic press, printing in two colors. Vauthier's roller-press is arranged to work on an endless roll of paper or on sheets fed in as usual, and prints in six colors. Electro shells are secured in position on the respective rollers, which are in horizontal series, and the paper is conducted by tapes to the rollers in succession. The French section shows a great variety of polychrome, lithographic and zincographic printing-machines, and also a great number of ordinary job and card presses, the most interest, however, centring in the large number and variety of the web perfecting presses for newspapers and for bill-work where long numbers are required.