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185 safest to be out of the neighbourhood of an instrument of the sort, and hence we think those who carry a camera revolver may occasionally get themselves into trouble. Dr. J. M. Eder sends us Part V. of his comprehensive work on photography. It treats of “ Studio and Labora tory,” and to the practical photographer is certainly the most interesting section of the book yet issued. Eder's “ Ausfiihrliches Handbuch der Photographie," the title of the entire work, is likely to put all other manuals in the shade, for we are promised about 1,200 pages, and no less than 1,000 woodcuts. Part V., which is now before us, contains 192 engravings, and being so richly illus trated, it becomes intelligible to any photographer who knows but a little of German. The publisher is Wilhelm Knapp, of Halle, and each part sells for two shillings and sixpence. One of the objections against using the Warnerke sensi tometer—or, rather, against burning a bit of magnesium wire in the dark-room occasionally—is the distressing effect upon the eyes of the vivid light and thick fumes. Everybody tries to avoid these in the best way he can, and a very good plan of protecting oneself is that adopted by Mr. Cowan in his laboratory. He simply takes the pre caution to have a sheet of orange glass in his left-hand, while he burns the magnesium in his right. The burning magnesium is moved to and fro iu front of the luminous paint tablet (to sensitize the latter), and Mr. Cowan leisurely watches the operation through the orange glass, which, held between hisjeyes and the light, saves him entirely from the piercing rays and white vapours given off on burning. We spoke about Mr. Cowan’s “light” dark-room, the other day; but a matter equally surprising to those who believe in ruby gloom, and nothing else, for gelatine photography, is Mr. Cowan’s store-closet of emulsion. This resembles a cupboard in which housewives keep their jams and preserves, and it is, indeed, a simple wooden cupboard, and nothing more. On the shelves are ranged the jars of emulsion, quite open to the light, the only pre caution being that they are jars with “shut-over” tops —so-called chemical jars of Doulton ware. By not quite filling the jars, and taking care not to remove the top except in the dark-room, there is not the least risk of spoiling the emulsion by access of light. The windows of dark rooms which look into studios are occasionally the source of a little quiet enjoyment to the photographer—or used to be, for the public are getting alive to the fact that these apparently opaque patches are as transparent as common window glass. In the old days, when it used to be the fashion for Edwin and Angelina to be taken together before they “ took ” each other for better or worse, it was no uncommon thing for the photographer to be an amused witness of the oscu latory salutes with which the amorous youth used to beguile the time while awaiting the result of the sitting. It was a proof of the superior acuteness of the feminine intellect that, in nearly every case, the lady received these demonstrations of affection with reluctance, or was obviously ill at ease from the suspicion that “some one was looking.” All this is, of course, droll enough; but one gets used to the love-making of other people in a sur prisingly short time, and most photographers become hardened to the process. On one occasion, however, a well-known photographer was awakened in sober earnest, when, on looking through his dark-room window, he saw a lady, whom he had left a minute or two previously in the apparent possession of her senses, suddenly take leave of them. She had walked up to the dark-room window, had put her face within half a foot of the glass, and was smirking and smiling, and otherwise contorting her countenance in the most idiotic fashion. Forgetting that she could not look through, the startled photographer imagined his sitter was making faces at him, when— happy thought!—the solution of the mystery occurred to him. The dark glass, of course, acted as a mirror, and the lady was simply practising her “ expression." Government refuses to build an observatory on Ben Nevis, so money is to be raised for the purpose by private subscription. Five thousand pounds is the estimated cost, but this is surely too moderate a sum. There is plenty of building material on the spot, as everyone who has climbed over the rough boulders to the top of Scotland’s Mont Blanc knows very well; but the labour of fashioning it for masonry, as also the cost of building more than four thousand feet above the level of the sea, would necessarily be very great. Mr. Wragge, the energetic metereologist and mountaineer who took daily observations on Ben Nevis during the past two summers, has abundantly proved the importance of the station, standing as it does as a sort of out-post on the coast; and he has pointed out how it might be made still more useful by having another station some five hundred miles in front in the Atlantic—a moored light-ship would answer the purpose—with which obser vations mightjbe compared. We recently quoted a statement made at the Royal Microscopical Society, to the effect that electric accumu lators were likely to turn out failures, on account of their gradual loss of energy when re-charged, and necessary extinction in course of time. Mr. Edison has lately been expressing himself to the same effect, but in far more forcible language than that used at the Microscopical Society. If the report of his conversation with the reporter of a Boston newspaper be correct, he has denounced the storage battery as “a catch-penny, a sensation, a mechan ism for swindling by stocking companies.” He estimates the yearly depreciation at not less than thirty per cent, of the first cost if used daily, and that a renewal of the accumulator once in four years is necessary. If this be so, the shareholders in the Faure Company have not a very brilliant outlook. But, then, the accumulator is only in its infancy.