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552 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [August 31, 1883. To facilitate the inking, it is well to apply to the lines some oil, which destroys their brilliancy and turns them grey. Then, after a careful drying, the bitumen is dissolved by benzine, and the plate is again dried. It can then be delivered to the printer, who submits it, without any precautions, to the customary operations of lithography for inking and printing.” ^iaUs. His Majesty the King of the Belgians has given his consent to the meeting of a photographic congress, under Government auspices, at Brussels next year, for the pur pose of deciding upon a unification of terms in photo graphic processes and formula. We learn that our Year-Book (1881) photograph of Daguerre was of considerable assistance to the artist who fashioned the bust unveiled at Cormeilles on Sunday. Mr. Linley Sambourne, the well-known Punch artist, following in the steps of his colleague, Mr. Du Maurier, has taken up photography to aid him in his work. M. Hutinet, of Paris, is to give a series of demonstra tions with “ a new brilliant gelatino-bromide paper,” in this country. The first takes place in London on Monday next, at the “ Golden Cross ” Hotel, Strand, at eight p.m. Mr. Campbell Swinton, it will be seen, is employing hydrokinone in combination with pyrogallic acid for gela tino-bromide development. Our readers will be anxious to learn how this compound developer answers in his hands, and in what proportion he employs the two princi pal agents. Colonel Laussedat, who successfully worked at photo lithography in France, contemporaneously with the late Sir Henry James in England, is likely to obtain the vacant chair in the Paris Academy of Sciences. As the Daguerre memorial has opened up again the rights and wrongs of the invention of photography, we may men tion that in our little book “About Photography and Photographers ” is included a history of “ The first camera photograph.” According to Nature, Herr Wauschaff, of Berlin, is em ploying photography for registering earth currents. His apparatus consists of a very delicate galvanometer enclosed in a case with a clockwork arrangement for moving a photo graphic plate steadily downwards. A fine ray of light is reflected on to the galvanometer mirror by a total reflection prism, and is focussed on the photographic plate. The speed of the movement of the plate is 80 mm. per hour, thus allowing variations from minute to minute to be ob served. One word more on the subject of the Brussels Exhibi tion. Our notices during the past two weeks, as also the list of those honoured by diplomas and medals that we published in our last issue, sufficiently demonstrate the importance and truly international character of the gather ing, and we would urge all who have two or three days at their disposal to pay the exhibition a visit. Only those who have run over to the Belgian capital, either by Calais, Ostend, or Antwerp, are aware how brief and inexpensive the trip can be made. One of the most interesting exhibits at the present Amsterdam Exhibition relates to criminal photography, being the exemplification of a system which is likely to make the photographic records of prisoners ten times more useful than they are at present. Both in Paris and in London it is the rule to index the portraits of criminals under the various crimes committed by the models, each portrait bearing name, age, and some sort of personal des cription. With all these data, it is, however, very diffi cult to identify the habitual criminal; his name, of course, he changes a dozen times, the manner of wearing his hair may be altered once a month, and a clever fellow can add an apparent five or ten years to his age without difficulty. The Amsterdam plan is to index the photographic por traits by measurements of the middle finger, the foot, and the head. Of course, the measurements must be taken carefully, by means of accurate instruments, and by skilled men. The middle finger varies in males from 17 to 20 centimetres, so that if you estimate by millimetres there is a long range of measurement. In the length of head there is a variation from 16 to 21 centimetres, and in the foot an even greater difference. Supposing there was a collec tion of 60,000 male portraits to index, these would first be divided into three parts, representing short, medium, and tall people, and each 20,000 be again sub-divided into small, medium, and big-footed people. Then the measurement of head and of finger would come in to assist in further sub-division, and, finally, colour of eyes, age, &c., assist in sub-dividing still more. In the end, according to the Amsterdam calculation, it would be possible, supposing the criminal album to muster 60,000 portraits, to fine down the identity of a suspicious character within 50 portraits ; that is to say, that if the police arrested a man on suspicion, and carefully measured him, they would have but 50 portraits to look over in order to find out definitely whether he had been in their hands before. The inauguration of the Daguerre bust has been a god send to the daily press, which, in the sitting session, finds it hard work to get interesting subjects for their columns. The Telegraph, whose self-confidence habitually leads it to rush in where other people fear to tread, is particularly amusing in its comments. It thus begins a sentence of stupendous length;—“Although photography is capable of producing apparently (sic) faithful transcripts of all kinds of objects, animate and inanimate ; although a page of a newspaper can be photographed on a sheet of the diameter of a pea, and under a film of enamel may last as long as an Etruscan vase, or an Egyptian lachrymatory—