"One point that strikes us forcibly on a survey of the last few months is, the extraordinary contrast which the attractive and the useful features of the display present. It will be remembered that the American department was at first regarded as the poorest and least interesting of all foreign countries. Of late it has justly assumed a position of the first importance, as having brought to the aid of our distressed agriculturists a machine which, if it realizes the anticipations of competent judges, _will amply remunerate England for all her outlay connected with the Great Exhibition_. The reaping machine from the United States is the most valuable contribution from abroad to the stock of our previous knowledge that we have yet discovered." Again: "It seems to us that the great event of 1851 will hereafter be found blemished by a _grand oversight_. Attracted by the novelty and splendid success of the occasion, we have certainly yielded more admiration to the grand and the beautiful than to the unostentatious, the practical, and the useful. The captivating luxuries which are adapted to the few have entered more largely into our imaginations and our hearts, than those objects which are adapted to supply the homely comforts and the unpretending wants of the many. We have thought more of gold and silver work--of silks, satins, and velvets--of rich brocades, splendid carpets, glowing tapestry, and all that tends to embellish and adorn life, than of the vast and still unexplored fields which the necessities of the humbler classes all over the world are constantly opening up to us. France has thus been enabled to run quietly away with fifty-six out of about one hundred and sixty of our great medals, while to the department of American "notions" we owe the most confessed and the most important contribution to our industrial system." Again: "Well worthy of notice is the Maynard primer, a substitution for the percussion-cap, which is simply a coil of paper, at intervals in which spots of detonating powder are placed. The action of the doghead carries out from the chamber in which it is contained this cheap and self-acting substitute for the ordinary gun apparatus, which is a vast economy in expense as well as in time. In its character the invention is one which admits of being easily adapted to every description of firearms at present commonly in use, and that at a trifling cost."