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Jlotes. “ I find that pyro and ammonia make the best deve loper.” So said Mr. Peter Mawdsley at a recent meeting of the Rochester Photographic Association. The subject under discussion was, “ What developer gives the best negative ?‘ and if all the members did not speak at once, a very large proportion made remarks in rapid succession, and mentioned points in favour of more deve lopers than we thought existed. Mr. Mawdsley, whose experience is far riper than that of anyone else who was present, summed up the case as above stated. “The working capabilities of cheap lenses” lias been the subject under discussion at the Photographic Club on several occasions lately, and the following is the outcome. When one only wishes to work on a plate of the smallest size, and shortness of exposure is a secondary consideration, a cheap lens may be used ; but it must also be understood that neither straight marginal lines are to be expected, nor can a wide angle be included. The cheap lens advocated by Mr. George Smith—the most persistent champion of economy in optical appliances —is an achromatic opera-glass objective, which costs Is. 6d. if bought wholesale. It is quite true that excellent pic tures can be taken by such an instrument, if the subject should happen to be one that does not suffer by the sacri fice of all the qualities above enumerated, and if the user should not he so unfortunate as to have a lens with a very bad place just opposite the diaphragm ; but all this holds equally good of a spectacle lens costing two-pence. To make a lens which, like the English portrait lens tested by Belopolski (vol. for 1884, p. 777), will give well- defined images less than a six-hundredth of an inch in diameter, is a triumph of optical skill of no mean order. The lens was used with its full aperture of about 4, On p. 258of our volume for 1883 we gave an illustration of the arrangement for laryngeal photography, as devised by Dr. Stein, of Frankfurt. He illuminated the larynx with a beam of solar light in the case of his early experi ments, but now uses a small incandescent lamp placed in the mouth. The conditions under which the incandescent electric light can be used for photographic work are ex plained on page 385 of our volume for 1882 ; and on page 225 of the vol. for 1883 will be found details of the method by which Mr. H. Trueman Wood, together with Mr. Cadett, made laryngeal photographs by the electric light. An ingenious fraud committed indirectly by means of photography. A spendthrift nephew having obtained his rich uncle’s carte, placed it in his album, which was one in which a slit was cut out of the page beneath each carte in order to show not only the por trait, but the autograph of the original written at its foct. Having procured a blank cheque on his uncle’s bank, the nephew slipped it between the bottom of the carte and the album page so folded that the place for the signature came just lemath the flit referred to. When he next had a chance, he asked his uncle to kindly append his autograph beneath his carte, and tendered him the album and pen- and-ink. So the uncle wrote his name, not on the carte, as he thought, but on the blank cheque. Mr. H. Chapman Jones, who in our issue of a fortnight ago pointed out the value of the uranium intensifier for gelatine plates that have been treated first with mercuric chloride and then with sulphite of soda, calls attention to a possible source of failure. He says:— “ When the uranium intensifier is made with ordinary hard water, it will sometimes (if not always) refuse to act even after several minutes’ application. This is apparently due to carbonate of lime in the water. A little citric acid added to the intensifier at once sets matters right, and under such circumstances acidification is the proper course, and not the strengthening of the intensifier. Ignorance of this fact has probably led to many a foggy plate, and ill-feeling towards one of the best intensifiers. Mr. Olivier, writing in the Coinples Rendus, points out that the radiometer of Crookes may be used advan tageously as a light indicator by the photographer ; and this, notwithstanding the fact that the speed of revolution is not exactly proportionate to the actinic power of the light. Mr. Crookes himself called attention to this matter ten years ago. Photography, it will be remembered, was turned to practical account in a House of Commons debate by Mr. Broadhurst, M.P., who, before delivering his speech on the enfranchisement of lease-holders, distributed broadcast on the benches about him copies of a photograph of a lease hold house which had been allowed to fall into utter dis repair and ruin by the time the end of the lease term approached. During the coming session, it is said, the example thus set will be followed in several other debates. Thus, for the discussion on the state of the Crofters, which is soon to come on, a well-known Scotch M.P. has pro cured a series of striking photographs, in which the miserable state of certain crofters’cabins are depicted. He has photographs of crofters’ children, too, in their usual costume of bare-sktn, trimmed with rags, and he thiuks the distribution of the views cannot but serve to emphasize his statements, and literally “illustrate ” his meaning. Another illustrated debate is to be that on the ignorant condition of gipsy-van and barge children ; whilst the in evitable sessional discussion on short v. long service is likely to acquire some interest from the proposed exhibi tion of typical portraits of the weedy and stunted boy soldiers of the new riyinie. But if photography was to