SYDNEY LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 158, 14 January 1854, Page 8

SYDNEY LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

Exhibition at Paris.—The Colonial Secretary moved, " That an Address be presented to His Excellency the Governor-General, transmitting a copy of the Report from the Select Committee on the subject of the Universal Exhibition at Paris in 1855, and requesting tliat His Excellency will be pleased to adopt the proper measures for giving effect to the recommendation therein contained." He could not for a moment -suppose but that this motion would receive the unanimous assent or the House, not only from its own intrinsic merits, but especially from a consideration of the great amount of good which they would have received from the grand Exhibition of 1851. The plan recommended by the Select Committee of that House, lately appointed to enquire into the subject, of which he was the Chairman, appeared to him to be the best that could be devised. The Committee recommended—" That it be an instruction to such Commission to collect and receive from various sources, the objects it may be considered desirable to transmit for exhibition, wi;h power to arrange and classify such articles, to determine upon their eligibility, and reject such as may seem inappropriate, and to make due provision for their safe conveyance to Paris, as well as for their being properly exhibited. That the Commission be also instructed^ to invite contributions from the various parts of the colony, of its natural productions, raw materials, and manufactures, and to appoint paid collectors to procure such objects as cannot reasonably be expected from private sources. That the Trustees of the Museum be requested to aid the Commission by their personal assistance, as well as by the supply of duplicate specimens of natural history. Your Committee further recommend that, in the Address to the Governor-General, his Excellency be requested to place upon the Supplementary Estimates for 1854 a sum not exceeding £3000 for the purpose of carrying out the design in the most efficient manner. Your Committee in preseuting this brief report would strongly urge their fellow-colonists to exert themselves in order that on the (approaching occasion the senior colony of the Australian Group may be placed in that position which, from the meagre display of its productions, it failed to occupy at the Great Exhibition in London of 1851." The Committee would have a Secretary, whose duty it would be to do nothing else but to write to the various parts of the interior, to solicit and encourage the forwarding of useful productions, manufactures, and natural specimens (hear, hear). He also thought that the suggestion for employing paid collectors was a most valuable one, and was calculated |to bring into notice many natural productions and specimens hitherto hardly dreamt of. He believed that there were many woods and minerals strewed over the face of this vast continent, which if imported into England or elsewhere, would prove of great value, but which as yet had been wholly neglected, and their real virtues utterly unknown. There were also a great variety of sands adapted to the manufacture of all kinds of glass, but which, like the woods and other natural productions of the soil, require to be brought into general notice before their usefulness cau be demonstrated."—Sydney Empire.