iS96. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 303 



to the Commission. During the last ten years some ^35,000 has been 

 spent by the Government of Cape Colony for geological purposes ; 

 but complaints have been made that although science may have been 

 advanced by the contribution of a scattered paper or two to English 

 publications, or by the enrichment of the British Museum with a 

 skeleton of Payeiasaurus, still the Colony itself has nothing tangible to 

 show. For the present Commission an appropriation of ;^i,50o has 

 been made for the months December, 1895 — June, 1896. It is hoped 

 that the future work of the Commission will be carried on by annual 

 grants of ;^2,ooo. Although South Africa abounds in mining engineers, 

 prospectors, and such-like practical geologists, of more or less com- 

 petence, still not much advance in our purely scientific knowledge of 

 its geology has been made since the days of A. G. Bain. The Com- 

 mission intends to devote its energies purely to the scientific aspects 

 of the science, and to steer as clear as possible of the ordinary 

 speculator. By this means a secure foundation will be laid for the 

 geology of Cape Colony. The Commission will be glad to receive 

 copies of any geological publications, in return for which they offer to 

 forward the reports on the geology of the Colony. 



Moving Pictures. 



The era of living pictures at the music halls is being replaced by 

 an era of moving pictures. The living pictures, attractive though 

 many of them might have been, were the antithesis of all art ; 

 pictures, in a sense, are studies from life ; the living pictures were 

 life posing as a study of itself, a truly fin de Steele conception. The 

 moving pictures are wonderful reproductions of life on a screen. The 

 spectators sit opposite what seems an ordinary magic lantern screen, 

 and see thrown from the lantern, say, a country railway station. 

 Gradually, before their eyes, a train steams up to the platform, 

 passengers emerge, porters bustle about ; the station gradually 

 empties and the train is shunted out. The mechanism consists of an 

 adaptation of series of consecutive, instantaneous photographs of 

 moving objects. An account of the methods by which these may be 

 taken is to be found in the treatises by Dr. Muybridge, and by 

 Professor Marey (a translation of the latter's work having recently 

 been issued by Mr. Heinemann, under the title " Movement "). The 

 consecutive photographs are turned into lantern slides, and the 

 novelty of the process consists in the adaptation of the movements 

 of the lantern slides to the intervals of time that separated the actual 

 events recorded on the different plates. 



The Edinburgh Summer Meeting. 



Although University Extension in general is on the Vv^ane, 

 summer meetings in which instruction is tempered by excursions and 

 amusements flourish exceedingly. We have received the programme 



