2-970-217 - /Heritage Images

The Universal Cattle Show and Agricultural Exhibition, Paris, 1856. Visitors at the Palais de l'lndustrie. '...the ground in the centre of the building...has been transferred into a delicious garden...Grassplats with their velvet verdure, graceful flower-beds, shrubs, fountains, groups of statuary - all, in fine, that could refresh the sight, and shed a charm over the whole place, has been got together. Standing, from the gallery, one may fancy he was looking over some fair valley, rich in verdure and fragrant in flowers, while the singing of birds from aviaries half concealed amid the trees and shrubs, the gushing of the cool waters as they flash in the stray sunbeam that shoots down through the crystal roof, and the occasional lowing of the cattle complete the illusion. Never was it imagined that a cattle show could be made so interesting'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.