We have lately received from Messrs Burton Brothers of Dunedin, New Zealand, a set of most interesting photographs, taken in the neighbourhood of Tarawera and Rotomahana, immediately after the late volcanic eruption. Were we not aware of the terrible facts, we should suppose that these were winter scenes, for the trees are stripped of their foliage, and everything is covered with a white ash, which in the photographs looks likes snow. The ruins of M‘Rae’s hotel at Wairoa, of which there are front and back views, exhibit such a mass of broken masonry and twisted iron-work, that one can hardly believe that the place has not been bombarded.
We are glad to learn, from the New Zealand Herald, that the layer of ashes which covers so many miles of the country, will not, as was at first feared, choke and kill every blade of grass, but will probably in time act as a valuable fertilising agent. Already the grass is in many places growing up through the dust; but the ash has been submitted to experiment, and is found to be really nourishing to plants grown in it. Mr Pond, a resident analytical chemist, obtained several samples of the volcanic dust, and sowed in it grass and clover seeds, and kept them moistened with distilled water. In each case, we are told, the seedling plants have come up well and are growing vigorously; it is therefore hoped that those districts which have received only a light covering of this dreaded dust will find that the visitation will in the end prove beneficial to their crops.
As we stated last month, the armour-plated ship Resistance has lately formed a target for various experiments with different types of guns. The unfortunate old ship is now being subjected to attacks by torpedoes, the object being to determine the nearness at which one of those submarine mines can be exploded without injury to a vessel when protected by wire-netting. It is proved that if the defensive netting is supported on booms thirty feet from the ship, it forms a good protection from torpedoes, and that though a torpedo should explode on touching the netting, as it will do if fitted with the new form of pistol trigger, which is very sensitive, the explosion will do no great harm. The distance of the netting from the ship will be gradually reduced until the Resistance can resist no longer, and must be destroyed.
A strange sight was lately witnessed at Salzburg, in the shape of a vast procession of butterflies, which passed over the city in a south-westerly direction. They seemed to fly in groups, and while preserving one line of direction in flight, the groups revolved round that line. This aërial insect army must have numbered millions of individual butterflies. From those which fell to the ground, it was seen that they were of the kind known as willow-spinners.
Photographic tourists—and their name now is legion—will all admit that their greatest drawback is represented by the weight of the glass plates which they must carry from place to place in addition to their other apparatus. This difficulty has just been obviated by the introduction of a material as a support for the photographic image which is as light as paper, so that in the compass of an ordinary two-shilling railway novel, the tourist can carry with him the sensitised material for a couple of hundred pictures. This material is known as Woodbury tissue, and was the last invention of the late eminent experimenter who gave his name to the beautiful Woodburytype process of photography. His successors have brought the tissue to marketable perfection, and produce a material as translucent as glass and one-twentieth part of its weight. The tissue is used in a singularly ingenious form of dark slide or double back, which can be readily adjusted to existing forms of cameras.
In the Camera magazine, a very curious phenomenon in connection with photography is recorded by the person who observed it. He took a portrait of a child apparently in full health and with a clear skin. The negative picture showed the face to be thickly covered with an eruption. Three days afterwards, the child was covered with spots due to prickly heat. ‘The camera had seen and photographed the eruption three days before it was visible to the eye.’ Another case of a somewhat similar kind is also recorded where a child showed spots on his portrait which were invisible on his face a fortnight previous to an attack of smallpox. It is suggested that these cases might point to a new method of medical diagnosis.
The Severn tunnel, one of the greatest engineering undertakings of modern times, is at last finished, and will be shortly open for passenger traffic, as it has been some weeks for the conveyance of goods. The total cost of this great work is estimated at two millions sterling. The cost has been greatly augmented by the unlooked-for difficulties which have cropped up during the progress of the works. Commencing in 1873, the contractor had made steady progress for the following six years, when a land spring was accidentally tapped, and the partially constructed tunnel was flooded. Again, in 1881 the seawater found out a weak place on the Gloucestershire side of the works, and poured in in torrents. Once more, in 1883 the old land spring again filled the works with water, which had to be pumped out; and finally, about the same time, a tidal wave brought about a great amount of destruction to the works; so we may look upon the completed tunnel not only as a great monument of engineering skill, but as an example of unusual difficulties well grappled with, and finally overcome.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
PHARAOH’S HOUSE.
It is but a month or two ago that people of an archæological turn of mind were delighted with the tidings sent home by the Egypt Exploration Fund of the discovery of Pharaoh’s House in Tahpanhes. An account of the wonderful old ruin and its reliques of a past civilisation has been already given; but it may interest many to know that a number of antiquities have been collected and sent home, and have recently been on view at the Archæological Institute at Oxford Mansion. It will be remembered that the ruins were as much those of a military fortress as of a royal residence, and the objects recovered are almost entirely those which would be likely to be found in either of two such places.