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THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. May 11, 1883. The annual Exhibition at Pall Mall will open this year on Saturday, the 6th October. “On Photographic Action Studied Spectroscopically,” is the title of a lecture which Captain Abney will deliver before the Chemical Society on the 17th inst. In the discussion on photographing colours which followed Mr. Sawyer’s paper on Tuesday night at the Photographic Society, Mr. Warnerke maintained that bromide of sodium employed in collodion emulsion yielded a silver salt most sensitive to non-actinic colours, such as orange and yellow. Mr. Blanchard, in the same discussion, took the oppor tunity of drawing attention to the fact that he had always found raw sienna the most difficult of all pigments to render by photography. Wherever a painting was touched with this pigment, nothing but black appeared in the photo graph. Therefore, all who produce paintings with a view to their reproduction by photography, should beware of raw sienna. A telegram from Callao says that portion of South America was overcast on Sunday last, the day of the Eclipse. It is fortunate, therefore, that our observing expedition took the precaution of going a thousand miles or so further east. Mr. Ray Woods and the American party hoped to arrive at their destination on the 25th April, some ten days, there fore, before the Eclipse, and his interesting letter which we print to-day was posted at Callao at the moment of their sailing from the South American Continent, on the last stage of their journey out. Mr. Woods has promised us an account of the life of the scientific expedition on Caroline Island, which, presenting as it does a sort of civilised Robinson Crusoe aspect, will doubtless be very entertaining. After the Eclipse, the voyagers go on to Honolulu, in the Sandwich Islands, and thence proceed to San Francisco ; but under no circumstances are we likely to hear from them again until the 1st of June. We said last week that Caroline Island and Flint Island, in the Pacific, were uninhabited. This is scarcely correct, at any rate, so far as the former is concerned. When Mr. Ray Woods landed with his companions and their heavy cargo of cameras, telescopes, and spectroscopes, it is not unlikely that they found human beings of some sort to welcome them, for in 1874, when Caroline Island was visited, there was one Englishman there, and a few Pacific islanders. A correspondent is of opinion that the invention of Mr. Kurtz, described in our issue of last week, is but a round about way of effecting that which is one of the simplest things possible to do. ‘ ‘ Why, ” he asks, “ go to the trouble and expense of erecting cumbrous machinery, to enable camera and sitter to take their walks abroad, when as many moving lights and shadows as one wants can be cast over the face by a screen held by an assistant, and gently agitated during exposure ? ” The Times is good enough to say, when criticising Mr. Gregory’s picture of “ Piccadilly ” in the Royal Academy, that “ in such a picture everything, absolutely everything, depends on the ex ■ ition. It would be easy to make it vulgar ; it would be easy to make it look like a photo graph. Mr. Gregory has done neither.” It is a pity the Times did not explain what it meant, when it virtually asserted, of a scene of busy street life, that not to be like a photograph was a point in its favour. If there is one thing in which the photographer has the advantage of the artist, it is his power of being able to seize nature “ as it flies.” But this evidently is not what the critic was thinking about, as he further pronounces a certain “ bit of red” to be “ simply everything to the picture.” So far as “ bits of red ” are concerned, the photographer must of course hide his diminished head. At last we have an instance of an English painter of the first rank employing photography as a means of vulgarising his work. The “ Music Lesson ” of Sir Frederick Leighton is to be reproduced by photo-gravure. We shall not have to wait long now before we can purchase photographic impressions of the Royal Academy pictures, just as in Paris you can buy photographs of the current pictures of the Salon. Eight thousand francs (£320) have now been collected for the monument to Poitevin, and this sum is still likely to be considerably increased. The municipal ities of Chalon- sur-Saone and Sarthe have contributed towards the object. The story of the attempt to extract blackmail from a curate, which we reproduced a few weeks ago, appears to have had a parallel in America. Miss Mary Anderson, who will occupy the Lyceum while Mr. Irving is in America, was recently surprised unpleasantly by the receipt of a photograph, in which she was represented as being kissed by some unknown individual, and was informed unless she “ paid up,” copies of the photographs would be distributed wholesale. Miss Anderson was, however, not to be frightened, and instead of putting down her money, deter mined to put down the libeller, and undertook—what an American paper commenting upon the incident has called— “ the unpleasant duty of punishing the blackmailers.” At present this method of annoyance has not become so general in England as to require special legislation, but in America it would almost seem to be no novelty when we find a New York paper asserting that “ we need a law classing the forging of photographs with the forging of signatures, and punishing it with at least as much severity as that with which the latter crime is punished.” Whether the exact copy of one person’s face, together with an exact copy of some other person’s body—the plan adopted in|this case- can be exactly termed a forgery, may be questioned; but there can be no doubt that the impression intended to be conveyed is wholly false and libellous, and the perpetrator ought certainly to be severely punished. Those who care to puzzle over problems may feel inte-