The foreign contributions in the department of machinery are, it will be seen, hardly so large as might have been anticipated. When the spacious annexes are added to the floor of the main hall, the great preponderance of home exhibitors--five to one in the latter--is shown to be still more marked. In Agricultural Hall the United States claim less than two-thirds. The unexpected interest taken in this branch by foreigners will enhance its prominence and value among the attractions of the exposition. The collection of tropical products for food and manufacturing is very complete. The development of the equatorial regions of the globe has barely commenced. Even our acquaintance with their natural resources remains but superficial. The country which takes the lead in utilizing them in its trade and manufactures will gain a great advantage over its fellows. England's commercial supremacy never rested more largely on that foundation than now. Brazil, the great power of South--as the Union is of North--America, possesses nearly half of the accessible virgin territory of the tropics. Our interest joins hers in retaining this vast endowment as far as possible for the benefit of the Western World. A perception of this fact is shown in the exceptional efforts made by Brazil to be fully represented in all departments of the exposition, and in the visit to it of her chief magistrate, as we may properly term her emperor, the only embodiment of hereditary power and the monarchical principle in a country that enjoys--and has for the half century since its erection into an independent state maintained--free institutions. [Illustration: DOM PEDRO, EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.] In art domestic exhibits utterly lose their preponderance. Our artists content themselves with a small fraction of the wall- and floor-space in Memorial Hall and its northern annex. In extent of both "hanging" and standing ground they but equal England and France, each occupying something over twenty thousand square feet. Italy in the æsthetic combat selects the chisel as her weapon, and takes the floor with a superb array of marble eloquence, some three hundred pieces of statuary being contributed by her sculptors. She might in addition set up a colorable claim to the works executed on her soil or under the teaching of her schools by artists of other nativities, and thus make, for example, a sweeping raid into American territory. But she generously leaves to that division the spoils swept from her coasts by the U.S. ship Franklin, together with the works bearing her imprint in other sections, satisfied with the wealth undoubtedly her own, itself but a faint adumbration of the vast hoard she retains at home. Italy does not view the occasion from a fine-art standpoint alone. Of her nine hundred and twenty-six exhibitors, only one-sixth are in this department. [Illustration: JAPANESE CARPENTERS.]