3-021-066 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bird's eye view of the International Maritime Exhibition at Havre, [northern France], 1868. The exhibition '...occupies an open space of twenty acres...It is a quadrangle inclosed by four brick walls, with corridors around it...The ground within is laid out as a garden. In the centre is a structure made in imitation of the basaltic formation called Fingal's Cave, in the Scottish island of Staffa. This is the aquarium, where, in a series of tanks or cisterns, set amidst artificial rocks, is an extensive and various collection of all species of fish, marine reptiles and insects, and sea plants of every kind. The water is pumped in continually from the sea by a steam-engine, and the surplus is carried off by waste pipes...A conservatory of glass and iron, and several pavilions and exhibition sheds, are erected in different parts of the inclosure. The exhibition itself, though called a maritime exhibition, is one of a general or miscellaneous character. Its chief groups consist - first, of navigation; second, merchandise and trade products; third, fisheries; fourth, fish culture; and a fifth supplementary group, which takes in everything, such as statues, paintings, and works of art, not specially coming under the previous groups'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.