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THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [January 9, 1885. Jlotes. The most interesting portion of Major Waterhouse’s exhaustive articles on photo lithography have been re served for the end, and in our issue of this week we commence the eighteenth chapter, which deals with photo lithography in half tone. It seems that Mr. Tonndorf, of St. Louis, and Messrs. Kuhn Bros., of the same city, are about to have a legal contest to determine who is the true inventor and legal patentee of the postage stamp portrait. Our readers will remember that on page 712 of our last volume we gave examples of stamp portraits as Mr. Tonndorf makes them ; but considering that they were commonly made and sold in England more than twenty years ago, it surprises us a little to hear of a contest as to originality in this matter. At Lambeth Police Court this week an unhappy woman who was forced to charge her husband with assaulting her, owned to the magistrate that for some time past she had been supporting him and her three children out of her earnings derived from “ soliciting orders for photographs and other things.” It may be supposed that the “ other things ” were the chief source of income, for anything more pecarious than “soliciting orders for photographs ” —by which was meant, we presume, getting subscribers to portrait clubs—it is difficult to imagine. The canvasser for a portrait club occupies much the same position as the traveller on commission in coals or wine did in the days of Mr. Micawber. As an excuse for bad work, one may in some cases plead that it was done by an amateur ; but this is hardly so in photography, as some of the best pictures—if not the very best—are made by non-professional photographers. Still, now and then a bad photograph is widely distributed, or even published, with the remark that the picture is by Mr. ■ an amateur. This is rather cruel to the pro ducer, and more especially so when the subject is a well- known one, and one of which good photographs have been widely distributed. Of the making of elaborate apparatus, and the designing of complicated methods of checking omnibus and tramcar conductors, there is literally no end. A tolerably exten sive and very varied exhibition might be made by collecting the numerous inventions for the above purposes which have been tried and found wanting during the past twenty or thirty years. Comic journalists have found the suc cessive dodges—the bell-punch, the automatic money box, the coloured ticket tapes, the travelling detective, the clicking machine, and what not—as good as an annuity. But meanwhile, it would seem the conductors have persistently pilfered on, and Omnibus and Tram Company directors are still without the infallible check they desire. It would be unwise, therefore, to be too sanguine about the new “ conductor’s horror ” which it is said an in genious mechanician has invented, and of which it seems photography—that “ general servant ” of art and com merce—is a leading feature. The inventor is chary as to details, but the mainnovelty about hisdetective apparatus — which is to be fixed at the end of the 'bus, just under the driver’s box—is that it will contain a camera, by means of which negatives of the interior of the vehicle will be obtained every time a slop and a fresh start sets the apparatus at work. It is evidently thought that by this means a series of photographic registers of the “insides” at the various stages of the journey will be obtained. But even granting this were possible, it has yet to be explained how the photographic likenesses of the passengers can be made to furnish the information how far they mean to travel. Fares do not, as a rule, put on a “ twopenny,” or a “ threepenny,” or a “ beyond-the- above-distances ” expression when they enter a ’bus. An elaborate comparison of the various negatives of the state of the omnibus interior ought, to be sure, to assist a scrutineer in arriving, by a process of exhaustion, at a knowledge of when the stout old gentleman with the bulbous nose got in, or the thin lady with the umbrageous umbrella got out; but the process would be a complicated one, at least; and it is to be feared that, unless some im portant details are being kept back, this photographic check will have to be returned to its inventor, with the significant initials “N. E.” upon it—“No Effect.” The Stanley show of bicycles and tricycles will be held this year in a temporary building near Blackfriars Bridge on the Thames Embankment, and it opens on the 28th instant. As a means of outing with the camera, the tri cycle takes an increasingly important position. “ It is all very well,” said Mr. Norman Lockyer, when lecturing at the Society of Arts on Wednesday evening last, “ for the clock of the future to indicate up to twenty- four o’clock, but striking up to twenty-four will never do.” “ Try to imagine,” said the lecturer, “ the mental strain on a man who goes home in the evening, and while troubled by uncertainty as to the exact locality of the keyhole, is trying to make out whether the clock inside is striking twenty-three or twenty-four ! ” Photo-gravure is rapidly rising in favour. Mr. Millais’ well-known picture of “ Cinderella,” which appeared in the Grosvenor Gallery, has been reproduced by this method, and the painter is so pleased with it that he hopes “in the future, whenever tris work is translated into black and white, photo-gravure shall be the process.” Chloride, or bromo-chloride emulsion paper, for making prints by development, affords abundant subject for talk at such social meetings as those of the Club, or the London and Provincial Association. Among the prints recently shown, those of Mr. J. B. B. Wellington show as wide a range of tone as any we have