Benzole is highly inflammable, and must not be brought near a light. The varnish should be kept in a glass-stoppered bottle, as the ether is volatile, and soon evaporates if not tightly corked.
For blocking out backgrounds use Gihon's opaque, a non-actinic water-color paint. It costs fifty cents a cake, and one cake will last for a year or more.
William Walker Paten, 937 St. Paul St., Baltimore, Md.; G. Earl Raignet, 603 North Seventeenth St., Phil., Pa.; Elbert H. Dyer, 62 Bradford St., Philadelphia, Pa.; Louise Lewis, 1820 Pine St., Philadelphia, Pa.; Francis T. Stainer, Challinack, B. C.; Raymond E. Reynolds, 34 Ripley Place, Buffalo, N. Y.; Arthur Inkersley, 709 Hyde St., San Francisco, Cal.; Conant Taylor, 159 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, N. Y., George D. Porter, 212 Tulip St., Brooklyn, N. Y.; George Fuller, Pittsfield, Ill.; Gilbert Jackson, Boonville, Oneida Co., N. Y., wish to be enrolled as members of the Camera Club.
Lady Sophie F. Macquaide, 46 Mechlin Street, Germantown, Pa., asks if any member of the Camera Club has a No. 2 Bullet Camera for sale. She wishes to buy one.
W. H. writes that the directions for bromide-paper say that it should be opened in a dark room, and asks if that means that the room must be totally dark; if fixing, clearing, and developing solutions can be bought from dealers in photographic supplies; if Eastman's developing-powder is good for dry plates; and if transparencies can be developed with this powder. By a photographic dark room is meant a room in which there is a yellow or ruby light; the white light fogs the sensitive plate or paper. Solutions of all kinds may be either bought ready prepared, or will be made up at the store where photographic supplies are sold. One can buy the ingredients and make the solutions at home. It is cheaper to buy the hypo and make up the fixing-bath. One ounce of hypo to four ounces of water is the proportion for the fixing-bath. Eastman's powders may be used with any dry plate, and are also excellent for making transparencies.
A SHREWD TRICK.
People in general cannot understand the doings of a student of nature. Especially quite ignorant persons are apt to conclude, when told that the objects of his search are fossils or minerals, that under this explanation is concealed the purpose of securing some buried treasure, for that is the only thing that would induce them to dig. Mr. A. L. Adams relates an amusing instance of this reasoning.
"While excavating a large cavern on the southern coast of Malta, we had dug a trench in the soil on its floor some six feet in depth, in quest of organic remains. The natives in the vicinity, hearing of our presence, came in numbers daily to witness the proceedings, interrogating the workmen with reference to the object of our researches, of which the workmen were about as ignorant as themselves.
"One afternoon three stalwart fellows paid us a visit, and whilst they sat on the heap of dirt staring down into the dark ditch below, I dropped a Spanish dollar on a shovelful of earth, and the next moment it lay with the soil on the heap. Picking it up in a careless manner, I put it into our luncheon-bag, and a few minutes afterwards our friends disappeared, muttering to one another as they went.
"Great was our amusement the next morning to find that our trench had been carried fully four feet below the level we had gained on the previous evening. Not only that; several other excellent sections of the floor had been made by the natives in expectation of finding buried treasure."