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OcTOBER 23, 1885.] of the commercialist, may now and again be so lighted by the silver grey of the moon, or the gold of the setting sun, that it becomes lovely in all its lines and gradations, with which the artist may be as delighted and inspired as by the exquisite beauty of a Japanese fan. There is another kind of beauty, said Oscar Wilde, the beauty of fitness and complete adaptation topurpose. We often see this to perfection in a plough or a wheelbarrow. He who cannot admire a well designed plough or wheel barrow speaks falsely if he professes to admire the Par thenon. The exhibition of a few harmless photographs by a well- known Parisian photographer has this week excited the Radical party in Paris to something akin to madness. The photographs shown in a shop window at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Place de 1’Opera comprised portraits of the members of the Orleans family, Prince Waldemar and Princess Marie d’Orleans (whose marriage is the sole talk in aristocratic circles), a group of the Prince and Princess of Wales, their children, and the families of the Comte de Paris and the Duke de Chartres. These unfortunate photographs, we are told by the Globe, had on the Radicals the effect of a red rag on a bull. The Bataille and the Cri du Peuple shriek about the im pertinence of the foreigner coming to beard them in their den, and talk of the Royal and family visitors as so many hostages for the good behaviour of the pretenders. On the whole, these unlucky photographs have had rather a bad time of it. A correspondent writes to us apropos to the discussion, inevitably renewed at this time of the year, as to our method of managing passengers’ luggage on our railway. “It is objected,” says he, “ that English people are so often in a hurry, and arrive at a station so late, that the system of registration in vogu abroad is not to be thought of—it takes too long. “If this be so,” he goes on, “there is surely another plan by which luggage can be unmistakably identified, which would not take at most more than a couple of minutes to carry out. Instead of troubling to make elaborate entries in books, why not simply take duplicate photographs of the Saratago trunks, portmanteaus, and what not, which passengers successively arrive with ? ” “Withan instantaneous camera,” he continues, “the two views of each person’s baggage—be it made up of one piece or half-a-dozen—could be taken literally in half a jiffy, and, armed with the exact portrait of his portmanteau labels, letters, straps, and everything, it is difficult to see how a passenger could fail to easily identify and secure it at a journey’s end. The guard would of course take charge of the duplicate luggage cartes, for the purpose of checking the copies presented by the passenger, and the appropria tion of baggage by a thief woidd be made impossible. So writes our ingenious and ingenuous correspondent, concluding his letter with the remark: “Doubtless you 681 will be able to develop the crude idea I send you.” Our reply is, Yes ; we will willingly try to develop the crude idea in question on one condition; that is, we will do so if our correspondent will, on his part, first tell us how the duplicate photographs he alludes to are to be developed in the few hurried seconds which elapse between their being taken and the starting of the train. When he has deve loped his luggage cartes, as he calls them, it will be time enough to talk about developing his idea. Mr. Stavely Hill, in his recently published book on American travel, relates how he was “ sold ” through trust ing to other people. He had taken what he had thought were six valuable photographs—two on the Atlantic of icebergs, and four others. Coming across an underground cellar at a settlement called Standorf, Mr. Hill determined to utilize it for the purpose of changing his plates. After making all preparations for the thorough exclusion of the light, he proceeded to open his six slides, and found them —perfectly empty! As he says, " The managers of my photographic apparatus, before leaving England, had omitted to put any plates in the slides which I had been using, so that these six endeavours, though carried out with the greatest pains, had been productive of no results.” Moral—When you start on a photographic tour, always pack up every part of the apparatus yourself. Mr. Hill had great difficulty in persuading some of the Canadian Indians to be photographed. They were, it seems, annoyed with the Canadian Government, and looked upon the photographer as “after no good.” The women, however, were more tractable, and one of the photographs in the book shows an Indian with his face rolled up in his blanket to prevent his likeness being taken, while the squaw by his side is, with a woman’s curiosity, peeping over hers and laughing. Mr. Hill, we judge from internal evidence, did not develop his plates during his tour. The photographs with which the volume abounds are very inte resting. They are printed by the heliogravure process. Olsozewski has succeeded in producing a temperature of 225 degrees below zero on the Centigrade scale. This is the greatest degree of cold ever obtained. It will be remembered that the “ absolute zero ” of physicists—the lowest temperature possible—is only 273 degrees below zero. The Hell-Gate explosion, by which a dangerous shoal has been removed from New York Harbour, must have furnished Transatlantic photographers with a fine oppor tunity for instantaneous pictures. The great mine, con taining many tons of gunpowder and dynamite, was fired by an electric spark, Miss Newton, a little girl of eleven, the daughter of the chief engineer, completing the galvanic current necessary to produce the spark, by simply pressing a button. A dull roar was heard, and over an area of nine acres the water was simultaneousely elevated to a height of 200 feet. Then for a moment the mass seemed to remain THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS.
