Notwithstanding the rapid advance that has been made during the past few years in the beautiful art of photography, and the various new applications of it in different arts and sciences, in one particular it has stood still. A negative picture upon glass can, as every one knows, be produced in a fraction of a second. But the after-process of producing so-called positive prints on paper from that negative is a tedious business, depending in great measure upon the brilliancy of the weather. Messrs Marion of London have endeavoured to obviate these inconveniences by the manufacture of a special kind of paper, the nature of which they at present keep secret, and which they now offer to the photographic world. By this paper a negative can be made to yield a positive image in a few seconds, quite independently of daylight, for a gas jet or paraffin lamp is sufficient to affect its extreme sensitiveness. This invention will enable a photographer to send his patron a dozen or more copies of a portrait that has been taken the same day.
The Bread Reform League is a useful society which has been formed to counteract the modern tendency to make what is properly called ‘the staff of life’ in such a way that many of its most useful ingredients are discarded. This society has, under the organisation of its energetic honorary secretary, Miss Yates, opened an Exhibition in London, where different samples of bread stuffs, treated in various ways, are shown. The profits of this Exhibition are to go to a ‘Penny Dinner and Breakfast Fund’ for the benefit of needy children attending the Board Schools. Hitherto, only food for the mind has been provided at these establishments, and the fact has recently leaked out that forty per cent. of the children arrive at some of them without any breakfast, and that at other schools twenty-eight per cent. often are dinnerless. It is a terribly sad story, and one very difficult to reconcile with the oft repeated boast that London is the richest city in the world.
The Graphic makes a very sensible suggestion with reference to those gloomy places called railway waiting-rooms. In similar places in France, the walls are often adorned with well-executed maps in relief, showing the country through which the line passes. Why should not this system be adopted in Britain? Constant travellers know to their cost that there are many railway stations in the kingdom where waiting-rooms are only too necessary. The cry of ‘All change here!’ often means that all will be compelled to wait here for an indefinite period. Now, if waiting-rooms were furnished with maps and framed notices giving some account of the history of the surrounding neighbourhood, its antiquities, natural beauties, &c., the dreary time might in many cases be turned into a pleasant visit, and would most infallibly do good as an advertisement to the railway itself.
At a recent sale of art treasures at Cologne, there were put up to auction two curiosities which had been bought by their late possessor at some obscure town in Switzerland twenty-four years ago for the sum of twenty-three francs. One was a fifteenth-century cup of Venetian glass, and the other was a bundle of tapestry. At the last sale, these articles formed two distinct lots, and they realised more than thirty-six thousand francs—that is, fifteen hundred pounds sterling.
The question of ‘musical pitch’ has for many years troubled musicians, each country adopting a note giving a different number of vibrations per second as its standard. In Britain, we have the Philharmonic pitch, and when any one talks of having his piano tuned up to concert pitch, the Philharmonic standard is the one indicated. For some reason, the modern pitch is made higher than that recognised in past days, and consequently the compositions of some of the best composers are now heard in a key higher than that intended by their authors. We understand that a conference upon the subject is shortly to be organised. In the meantime, the Italian War Minister has sought the opinions of living composers with reference to the best pitch for military bands. We need only refer to the reply of one of these, Verdi, whose name is as familiar in Britain as in the country of his birth. He writes in reference to the modern high pitch: ‘The lowering of the diapason will by no means impair the sonorousness and brilliancy of execution; it will, on the contrary, give something noble, full, majestic to the tone, which the strident effects of the higher pitch do not possess.’ He goes on to say that one pitch should be common to all nations. ‘The musical language is universal; why, therefore, should the note which is called A in Paris or Milan become B♭ in Rome?’
A German paper gives some interesting statistics relative to ear disease, which have been collected from different aural surgeons. From these, we gather that males are more subject to ear disease than females. Out of every three middle-aged persons, there is found one who does not hear so well with one ear as with the other. The liability to disease increases from birth to the age of forty, after which it decreases as old age is reached. Of six thousand children examined, twenty-three per cent. show symptoms of ear disease, and thirty-two per cent. a deficiency of hearing power. With regard to the results of surgical treatment, we learn that of the total number of cases of all kinds, fifty-three per cent. are cured, and thirty per cent. are benefited. We fancy that these figures are rather more favourable than surgeons in this country can show, it being well known that aural cases are among the most uncertain and unsatisfactory to deal with.
The steamship Ionic, which lately left this country for New Zealand, took out with her a large number of passengers of a description not usually met with on shipboard. They consisted of one hundred and fifty-eight stoats and weasels, whose mission in New Zealand will be to prey upon the rabbits which are fast overrunning that country. This is the third consignment which has left our shores. The little animals are accommodated in zinc-lined boxes, and during the forty days’ journey are calculated to require for their food more than two thousand live pigeons, which accompany them. The poor pigeons also require food, and therefore sixteen quarters of Indian corn were taken out for their consumption. Altogether, the expense to the colonial government must be something considerable, but will not be grudged if the required result is achieved.
STOCK EXCHANGE MORALITY.
Perhaps there are few institutions possessing attributes more diametrically opposed to one another than the Stock Exchange. Undoubtedly useful in its way, it nevertheless abounds in gross abuse. It is a necessity to the bonâ fide investor, as indicating the locality where he can on the instant purchase or find a market for almost any stock in the world; yet it becomes a very hotbed of vice in the hands of the professional speculator. We apply this term to the man who fraudulently buys without the intention of paying, and worse still, sells what he does not possess. The method of so doing was fully explained in an article on ‘Corners’ in [No. 19] of this Journal. Take a quite recent illustration of the two evils. Only a short time ago, a letter purporting to come from Mr Gladstone’s private secretary, addressed to the Secretary of the Exchange, was received by him, and posted up in the House. It stated that certain unexpected interests would be paid to the Peruvian bondholders. The price went up over thirty per cent. in a few moments, so that any one having bought ten thousand pounds-worth the day before, could have then sold them for nearly fourteen thousand pounds. It is more than probable that the writer of the forged letter had previously purchased without any intention of paying or ‘taking them off,’ and on the imposition taking effect, at once sold out not only those he possessed, but also more that he did not possess. Within half an hour, the forgery was discovered, when the price immediately fell the thirty per cent. it had just risen. Thus this impudent adventurer would not only secure an enormous profit by the rise, but by buying back on the fall the extra quantity he had sold on the rise, reap an additional profit.
Now, it is this class of gambling, particularly the selling of what one does not possess, for the purpose of depressing the value of a certain stock to the prejudice of real holders, that constitutes the most unwholesome element of our Stock Exchange. Every conceivable artifice, the most consummate cunning, the most unblushing lies, are employed to depreciate a security which has either risen to a high figure on its merits, or else been puffed up artificially beforehand. Syndicates, as they are called—combinations of unprincipled men usually—are formed for the purpose, and there are indeed very few stocks existing at the present day that are not honoured by their especial syndicate. On any unfavourable rumour, more often concocted than otherwise, these eagle-eyed monsters swoop down upon their unsuspecting and inoffensive prey, attacking with the ferociousness of a bear, until, in sheer desperation, one victim after another succumbs, and sells out to the ‘bear’ at an enormous sacrifice, in order to save the remnant of his dwindled inheritance. If, as they were uttered in it, the falsehoods of a single day could but glue themselves to and stick on the walls of that building, it would be a feat impossible of achievement for a fly to crawl unscathed between them! Monte Carlo is bad; but an institution where more fortunes are dishonestly lost and won in a day than at that notorious gambling-place in a week, must be at least no better, if not infinitely worse.