NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 233 



afterwards fixed by a peculiar process, which is one of the secrets of the in- 

 vention. The advantages thus secured are transparency, capability of being 

 perfectly cleansed, and, as it is confidently stated, durability of colors. The 

 purity and delicacy of the result may be well imagined, and will doubtless 

 bring the discovery into use for ornamental windows, lamp-shades, and all 

 other transparencies. It will be valuable also for illuminations, and is quite 

 available for stereoscopic views. The ground of the picture is, of course, a 

 pure and pcrfcrct white, and this, though in some respects an advantage and 

 a desideratum, has its drawbacks in producing, artistically speaking, too 

 great contrasts of black and white. Want uf tone is the defect of these pu- 

 turcs, but in everything else the effect is all that can be desired. The paten- 

 tee also proposes the application of his process for manufacturing purposes. 

 He says, " It can be applied to the production of clock and chronometer 

 dials, watch dials, thermometers, barometers, compass faces, and tablets of 

 every description, ensuring a degree of accuracy never yet attained by the 

 engraver. They can be produced at less than one-third the cost of the 

 materials at present in use for the above purposes, and far excel in appear- 

 ance anything ever yet attempted. It cannot be injured by any length of 

 time or atmospheric changes, and can be washed as an ordinary piece of 

 porcelain." 



Curious Photographic Results. At the Dublin meeting of the British As- 

 sociation, M. L'Abbo Moigno presented, in the name of M. Eertsch, micro- 

 scopic photographs ; in the name of M. Neiper de St. Victor, a perfectly new 

 method of exhibiting, by means of photography, the phosphorescence and 

 fluorescence of bodies ; and in the name of M. Bingham, improved photo- 

 graphic copies of oil paintings. 



Photor/raphic Fac-siinil^s of Ancient Manuscripts. The powers of pho- 

 tography have very recently been employed with great success in producing a 

 number of fac-simile copies of the Codex Argenteus of Ulphilas, the oldest 

 (fourth century) sample extant of the Gothic language, the great mother- 

 tongue of the whole German stock. Dr. Leo, a gentleman connected with 

 the Eoyal Library in Berlin, was led by the numerous variations in the dif- 

 ferent reprints of the Ulphilas texts, to travel to Upsala, where the MS. is 

 still preserved, and there take photographic pictures on glass (so called neg- 

 atives) of about sixty pages, containing disputed texts. His original idea 

 was simply that of obtaining a fac-simile for convenient study at home ; but 

 the process itself has gone a great way to solve the difficulties and disputes, 

 by showing clearly what forms part of the original manuscript, and what has 

 been written in or over it subsequently. The success of this application of 

 photography, will, perhaps, incite the curators of our valuable libraries to 

 publish fac-simile editions of rare MSS. for the benefit of the distant student, 

 and submit all palimpsests and other recondite parchments to this most de- 

 tective test before proceeding to purchase. 



Mr. Beckingham, a photographist of Birmingham, England, recently in- 

 troduced a process which is a modification of two dry collodion processes, 

 and combines the advantages of both gelatine and glycerine. He primarily 

 prepares his plates with Ramsden's collodion in a slightly acid bath, and after 



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