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424 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [JULY 6, 1883. Dr. Hermann Vogel sails for America on the 18th instant, and on his return at the end of next month he will probably pass a few days in London. The interior of the Gaiety Theatre is now lit by in candescent electric lamps, and the Criterion will be similarly illuminated when it opens a few weeks hence. So that we have this novel and delightful means of illu mination adopted in three first-class London theatres. At the same time, one must not argue too much from this progress in electric illumination. While applications will be found more and more for the introduction of electric lighting, gas and candles will probably be used as much as ever in days to come. As it is, most employers of electricity use gas to generate the current; while at the theatres we have alluded to, gas is laid on throughout. As many an ingenuous admirer of the incandescent light has remarked, the tiny little lamp would be much more convenient if only there were no battery behind it; and following the same bent of thought, we may observe what a wonderful thing a candle would have been, that you can carry about lighted in your hand, if it had been but invented after the electric light. Some argue in the same way about matches that light only on the box; if these latter had been first introduced, what a wonder must have been the match that would light anywhere ! Mr. George Bruce, of Duns, sends us a most interest ing photograph ; it shows the imprint made by lightning upon a boy’s arm. Four boys, it appears, were struck, all of whom escaped with their lives, but were, nevertheless, marked on arms and neck by the subtle fluid. The im print takes the form of a fine sea-weed design, and is in red on the boy’s pink flesh. Professor Tait, of the Edin burgh University, deems Mr, Bruce’s print so interesting, that he proposes to draw the attention of the Royal Society to it. The non-existence of any planet in between the sun and Mercury seems now to have been definitely established by photography. During the recent eclipse, when the sun was obscured for nearly six minutes, M. Janssen searched the heavens with a camera for some distance around the solar orb. Had there been any planet in the neighbour hood, this would, obviously, have been lit up by the sun, and accordingly registered itself upon the sensitive film. But no evidence of any intra-Mercurial body was to be found upon the photographic plate. So Caroline Island was inhabited, after all. Mr. Wood’s description of the landing, how the flagstaff upon the green island was bare until a gun from the American frigate woke up the sleepy inhabitants—eleven in all—and how the British flag was run up in response to the salute, and loud “ hurrah ” from the ship’s company, is exceedingly graphic, and carries the reader right out into the mid-Pacific. Nor are the doings on the eventful day of the Eclipse less power fully told, as our readers will bear testimony. Work and play are described 80 well, one almost feel? to be partici pating in it all. The correspondence column of a semi-scientific con temporary has the following:—“ I am anxious to be able to take photos, of buildings, scenery, persons, and various objects, being quite up to chemistry and theory of photo graphy, but quite unacquainted with practical details. Will be much obliged if any reader will give me advice as to cameras, plates, books, &c.; and if I can get good instru ments for less than £2 ; and if I can take instantaneous photographs with same.” It is to be hoped this enquirer will not get hold of a catalogue of a first-class maker, or he will certainly alter his ideas about photography, so far as the value of “good instruments” is concerned. He may also find a difficulty in obtaining a lens which is equally good at “ buildings, scenery, persons, or various objects,” at all events, for the price of ten shillings, which would seem to be about all he is prepared to give. Elephants do not resemble professional beauties : they do not like being photographed. An elephant rejoicing in the name of Jumbo IL, belonging to Cross’s Zoological Establishment in Liverpool, was a few days ago put under the ordeal, with the result that directly he caught sight of the camera he rushed at it, and with one blow of his trunk smashed it to atoms. He was about to turn his attention to the unfortunate photographer, when the keeper interposed and stopped further proceedings. After undergoing punishment, Jumbo IT. consented to “sit,” and the operator succeeded, after some trouble, in obtaining a good negative. Mem.—When you take the portrait of an elephant, alway 8 have him thrashed first. The heat in the studio during the past few days has been intense. There is no better or readier way of cooling ths air than calico stretched on light wooden frames and kept saturated with water. If placed in front of an open window, so that the air passes through the wet calico, the temperature of the interior will be at once perceptibly lowered. Photographers are peculiar in the facility they show in re-discovering old discoveries, and in the zest with which they re-discuss matters which are generally supposed to have been “ threshed out.” The discussion at the last social meeting of the Photographic Society savoured some what of the last. The notion that exposure to light increases sensitiveness is as old as anything in photo graphy. In the “ System of Photography,” published in New York in 1849, we find Messrs. S. D. Humphrey and M. Finley writing thus : “ It is a fact not generally known that a plate coated in a light chemical room is more sensi tive than when coated in darkness. By admitting a free, uniform light, and exposing the plate to it a few seconds after coating, then timing short in the camera, a very light, clear impression is obtained ; the time in the camera is reduced in proportion to the previous action of light. The shades, of course, are destroyed, and the tone injured; still, for taking children, we have succeeded better by this method than by the use of ‘ sensitizers.’ ” This referred to Daguerreotypes; but the subject has been discussed many times in reference to collodion, and it reads oddly to