FIRST RETORT OF COMMISSIONERS.

XXXI

United States 40,000, to Austria 22,000, and so forth. The amount allowed toeach country was immediately communicated to its national Commission, and a listhaving at the same time been forwarded of the articles necessarily excluded fromthe Exhibition, and of the general rules laid down for all Exhibitors, the whole ofthe arrangements of detail were left to that body, which thereupon became singlyresponsible for the collection and selection of the articles to be exhibited from itsown country, and was subsequently entrusted with the arrangement of them in theBuilding, subject only to the general supervision of the Executive Committee, 'flicCommissioners early laid down the rule that no foreign goods should be admittedfor exhibition unless regularly forwarded by the Commission of the nation to whichthe Exhibitor belonged.

It may here be noticed that some countries having declined a portion of thespace offered to them, and an increased total quantity of space having been obtainedin the course of the building arrangements, the amounts allotted to several stateswere subsequently increased. A return in the Appendix shows the spaces originallyoffered to, and those actually occupied by, each country (Appendix No. XII.)

Arrangements having thus been made for the allotment of space by countries,and similar arrangements having been adopted for our own colonics, it next becameimportant to take measures for dividing the space reserved for the United Kingdom among our own exhibitors. Some exertions appeared also to be necessary in orderto bring together a good collection, for the objects and scope of the Exhibitionbeing still very imperfectly understood, many persons, capable of sending valuablecontributions, did not at first think of doing so. On the other hand, the amountof space being limited, and it having been decided that no rent should be chargedlor stalls, it was necessary to adopt a good system of revising the demands foradmission, lest the Building should be choked with articles of an inferior character,or with too great a number of the same kind. For this reason circulars wereaddressed to the Local Committees, calling upon them to use their exertions, in thelirst place, in procuring as many demands for space as possible from parties in theirseveral districts; these demands they were then to examine, and were to approveonly of such articles as appeared likely to add to the interest of the Exhibition ;they were then to forward to the Commissioners an account of the space demanded,specifying whether horizontal or vertical, and of the articles for which it was required.Those returns, when collected, were added and digested, and were lound to presentthe following results :—

Number of Exhibitors demanding space . . . 8,213

Amount of horizontal or counter space demanded . 41(5,354 sq. feet.

Amount of vertical or wall space demanded . . 194,886 ,,

From these returns an average was obtained of the number of square l’ect demandedby each exhibitor, and a proportion was also established between the amount ofthe space due to each of the four principal sections. The amount of horizontal spacethen at the disposal of the Commissioners being only 200,000 square feet, or less than