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616 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [SEPTEMBER 28, 1883. Sotes. Nine o’clock this evening is the latest time for sending in pictures for the Annual Exhibition, at 5, Pall Mall East. It is not impossible that Mr. Aiderman Nottage, of the Stereoscopic Company, may be chosen Lord Mayor on Saturday next. There is only one Aiderman senior to Mr. Nottage, and it is not by any means certain that the election will go by seniority this year. Our friend Dr. Hermann V ogel, who is now returning to Europe, has every reason to be satisfied with his recep tion by American photographers ; the enthusiasm over the Berlin professor reached its height on the occasion of a serenade, to which Dr. Vogel seems to have been un expectedly treated by his Yankee admirers. Vulcan, that mysterious planet between Mercury and the sun, to the existence of which French astronomers hold so tenaciously, has turned up again. M. Trouvelot, during the last eclipse, observed in the neighbourhood of the sun a red star, which, despite all subsequent research, he is unable to identify with any other known body. Ergo, he concludes, it is the long-sought-for planet Vulcan. M. Janssen, it may be remembered, who searched all round the sun with a camera during the period of the eclipse on Caroline Island, was unable to secure on his photographic plate any image of a heavenly body answering to the description. A Vienna paper, the Neue Freie Presse, speaks of a photograph taken by Herr Robert Haensel, of Reichen- berg, Bohemia, of a flash of lightning, showing actually its contact with the earth, and the nature of its discharge. The landscape was photographed at the same time, and from it a calculation has been made of the length of the flash. This is said to be no less than 1,700 metres— rather more than a mile—pretty good for an electric spark. The picture was shown this week at the British Association by Sir W. Thompson. The meeting of the British Association at Southport has been the dullest and most uninteresting for many a year. Scarcely a paper of importance was read, and none of the subjects brought forward seem to have created the least interest, either among visitors or townsmen. One or two more such meetings, and the British Association, which has been long on the wane, will cease to exist. Professor Henrici, in his opening remarks to the Mathe matical Section of the British Association, tells us that on reading over the addresses delivered by his predecessors in the chair, he was struck by the fact that in nearly every case the speaker began with a lamentation over his unfit ness for the work before him. The circumstance certainly is striking, for it at once stamps former presidents of the section as being not only modest, but essentially original in their observations. At the Paris Observatory they have made excavations to a considerable depth for the magnetic rooms. The reason of this, obviously, is that the swinging bar magnet, whose observations will be watched by photography, shall be influenced as little as possible by surface vibrations of the earth. The bar magnet carries a little concave mirror, which reflects a spot of light (from a neighbouring lamp) upon a moving sheet of sensitized paper ; any movement of the magnet due to an earth current deflects [the mirror, and thus causes the spot of light to move over the sensi tized paper, making a longer or shorter mark according to the energy of the earth disturbance upon the magnet. M. Scamoni has been good enough to forward us a mag nificent collection of photographs, emanating from the well-known studio of M. K. Chapiro, the photographer to the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. One series is particularly interesting, not only to the artist and photographer, but also to the psychologist, being no less than the “ Memoirs of a Manaic,” a number of pictures for which the eminent actor M. Andreyev-Bourlach has sat. These maniacal studies are presented most graphi cally, and, thanks to M. Chapiro’s skill and taste, their artistic merit is well worthy of the subject. Two ingenious individuals, reviving an old trick, have recently been swindling the unsuspecting householders in the north of London. The individuals in question—a man and a woman—call at your residence and persuade you to have it photographed. The negative is taken, shown, and payment requested in advance. The price charged is 5s. for three copies to be delivered within a week ; but the money once obtained, nothing more is seen of the operators. In this case the victims do not get the passing satisfaction which one of the earliest perpetrators of the dodge used to afford his patrons. This gentleman not only took the negative, but, to the surprise and delight of his customers, produced in less than half an hour, if the sun was shining, half a dozen prints or so. The drawback to the paper pictures was that the longer you admired them the more obscured they became, until they were finally buried in a blackened veil. The fact was the photographer delivered the prints just as they came from the frame, and, besides making a comfortable profit, was saved all the bother of toning, fixing, and washing. We are glad to see that in his paper read before the British Association, Captain Abney has again been advo cating the employment of an incandescent electric lamp aS a standard of white light, an idea, it may be remembered, we discussed at some length in these columns in June of last year. The American astronomers who took an active part in the observation of the recent solar eclipse have published a review of the work done in one of the American papers. Special notice is taken of Dr. Hastings’ observa tions, which, it is asserted, have led to the production of a new theory of the corona. This theory is, briefly, that the light seen around the sun during a total eclipse is not