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OCTOBER 23, 1885.J THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. 677 pass each print separately into running water, wash in four or five changes of water, and immerse in— Water 1 gallon Carbonate of soda ... 1 ounce Allow to remain inhere five minutes, then rinse, and pro ceed to tone in— Saturated solution of hypo ... ... 5 ounces Chloride of gold 2 grains and keep a crystal of hypo in the solution, as directly the hypo is weak the toning ceases, and if the hypo is kept fully saturated, it is astonishing how many prints can be toned with a grain of gold. It is also astonishing how much gold may be added to the hypo if it is not saturated, without any toning action being seen. CHEMICAL ACTION OF LIGHT IN THE FORMA TION OF ALKALOIDS AND TANNIN IN PLANTS. BY A. VOGEL. The recognised fact that hemlock, which with us contains conicine, in Scotland does not produce any, leads to the conclusion that sunlight plays a part in the formation of alkalies in plants. The same thing is indicated by the fact that tropical cinchona plants of various kinds yield in our hot-houses—poor in light as they are—scarcely any alkaloid, or none at al). If, then, sunlight may be considered as a factor in the production of alkaloids in living plants, on the other band it has an injurious effect upon the cinchonine contained in stripped bark. When this is dried in the bright sunshine, cinchonine is decomposed, and dark-coloured resinous un- crystallizable masses are formed; on this account the bark is at the cinchona factories dried in darkness. This characteristic behaviour has an analogous example in chlorophyll. This, also, is only formed under the influence of light, but when no longer contained in the living plants it is quickly destroyed by light. The formation of tannin in the living tree appears to be also influenced by the action of light. This is proved by the fact that the bark of the lower part of beeches and larches contain less tannin than that of the tops, which are more exposed to light. The difference is from 4:6 to 5:10. Sunny mountains produce fine bark richest in tannin. In dark places trees always contain less than in sunny spots. It is further to be remarked that those leaves are richest in tannin which are on the sides of the trees which face the sun. ART AND COMMERCIALISM. BT WALTER CRANE.* Wb have been lately told by a brilliant impressionist, no less in words than in paint, that there never have been such things as artistic periods ; that art is solely individual, and lives and dies with the artist. And among other interesting facts we learned that, after all, one thing is as beautiful as another (to a painter) if you only get it in the right light; that, in short, those striking features of modern landscape—-wharves and factory chimneys—look just as well as antique towers and palaces when merged in the twilight—that is, when you can no longer see what they really are, and the imagination is free to invest them with the romance of a past age. Now, whatever germ of truth such a statement contains, it only throws us back upon the question, “ What is art ? ” If it is the art only of the impressionist, the record in paint of the. children of the mist, of factory-smoke even, and London fog ; if nature must only be seen with the eyes half shut, and the abomination of desolation—the squalid outskirts and Stygian rivers of modern cities—then, indeed, former ages were but poorly furnished in the matter of art. What availeth the clear cut of noble sculpture of ancient Greece, of the work of her vase painters ? What availeth the endless decorative invention of the * Bead before the Fabian Society. Asiatic peoples, and of mediaeval and early Renaissance times, lavished upon all the accessories of life, not to speak of its culminating glories in painting and sculpture ? Could all this beauty of design and workmanship, in its constant growth and development through the centuries, have hung upon ‘a thread—upon the lives of one or two persons of genius, springing, like mushrooms, from universal indifference, ignorance, and decay ? Such an opinion is, however, only a sign of the times. When every man fights for his own hand, and every artist has to make his own public, such an individualistic conception of art is not altogether surprising ; and, were it intended to apply to the art of the present day only, would be very near the truth But a little inquiry and consideration would show that art has deeper roots. The delight in beauty, be it human or of wild nature; be it of light, colour, form, or sound, is a common possession and a necessity of life, as in the higher sense it must always be, so long as the human has any claim to be the higher animal. And it should be remembered that certain animals and birds have been proved to be sensitive to certain colours and decorative effects, which sensibility is indeed wrapped up with the very fact of the germi nation and continuity of life itself ; and this only convinces us how far down and deeply rooted is this sense in nature which has been so highly developed and specialized in man. Differing, it may be, in degree, but not in kind; cultivated, or uncultivated; modified by centuries of habit and association ; influenced by modes of thought and conditions of life ; wheresoever humanity dwells, in northern snow or southern sunshine, it flowers and seeds, and springs anew. Art, in all its forms, is normally but the language of this universal feeling which, shared more or less by all, consciously or unconsciously, is fully comprehended, passionately expressed, and communicated in tangible and eloquent shape by compara tively few. But I should say that every one whose heart is stirred at the voice of music, at the music of poetry ; everyone who feels the magic of beauty and is touched by its pathos ; who is moved by the strangeness of the shifting drama of life ; every one who vibrates, as it were, to the harmonies of nature, is a potential or latent artist. As far as we can judge from its history, it would seem that this power of artistic expression, controlled as it is by countless influences of soil, climate, and character; constantly intercrossing and blending ; springing from simple beginnings, and passing through various stages of growth, development, and decline, with the life of nations—this power, I say, seems to have reached its noblest and most beautiful results under collective conditions —of the arts, at all events—when all art was decorative, and all were allied with architecture, depending technically upon a certain continuity of tradition, and intellectually on a certain consentaneousness or universality of sentiment, ere it reached a high perfection among a people, being always at its highest in public monuments. It is obvious, since these conditions depend upon a vast number of other conditions. Since art is the flower ing of the tree of life in man’s moral nature, the form in which it is cast must, finally, be the outcome of the social, political, and economic conditions of society. We have only to remember the temples and palaces of antiquity, whether the colossal fragments of the crumbled civilizations of the East, the sculptured triumphs of Greece and Rome, or the cathedrals of public halls of the middle ages. Art in such buildings touches sublimity. The effect, for instance, of such a building as that of St. Mark’s, at Venice, is like embodied music —rich, mysterious, splendid, harmonious; storied with the legends and emblems of a faith, and a conception of the universe then corresponding with the knowledge and aspirations of man kind, full of solemnity, pathos, and dignity. But one of our own English Cathedrals, where the ruthless hand of the modern restorer is not too obvious—say our historic Abbey of West minster here—will impress us in' the same kind ; and this impres siveness is not due merely to the effect of antiquity, though it no doubt contributes. We feel it to be the collective work of artists and craftsmen, as well as of ages, and we feel it embodies the aspirations, the religious sentiment, even the humour and satire of its time, and, speaking through the architect, the mason, the carver, the glass painter, is heard the voice of a whole people. But if one should go into a modern church in search of the ideas of the time, I am afraid he would only find the ideas of the new curate. The former dignity and impressiveness of art is usually ac counted for by the fact that it was in the past chiefly devoted to the service of religion ; but that was only because religious idea