April h. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



311 



unable to find a copy of the work in any of the 

 many pulilic libraries in which I have sought to 

 establish its identification. The costumes appear 

 to be those of the year 1700. G. L. S. 



The book M, inquires for is probably — 



"Job. Amos Commerrii Orbis Sensualim Pictus: hoc 

 est, omnium principalium in Mundo Rerum, et in Vita 

 Actionum Pictura et Nomenclatura. Tlie Visible World : 

 ' or a Nomenclature and Pictures of all the chief Things 

 that are in the World, and of Men's Emploj^ment there- 

 in ; in above 150 Copper Cuts. Written by the Author 

 in Latin and High Dutch, and translated into English by 

 Charles Hoole, M.A. London, 1705." 



This seems to have been a very popular ele- 

 mentary book during the latter half of the seven- 

 teenth century; and as the translator's address is 

 dated " From my School in Lothbury, Jan. 25, 

 1658,"* my old edition is not one of the earliest 

 impressions, although it has had the rare good 

 luck to run the gauntlet of not a few generations 

 of the juvenile destructives for whom its pictorial 

 pages were intended, with less than the ordinary 

 wear and tear. The cuts belong eminently to the 

 class-book school of illustration, and the artist 

 has left nothing undone in depicting the Visible 

 World, with its created and artificial contents, 

 from the smallest of the insect tribe to the genus 

 Homo in the first, and from the hewing down of 

 the tree to the full-built city in the last. Hoole's 

 version seems to have undergone revision in 1727, 

 the eleventh edition being then published, with a 

 critical advertisement upon its merits and defects, 

 with some of the latter amended, by J. H. 



About this time, however, the Oibis Pictura 

 met Avith a competitor in the London Vocabulary 

 of James Greenwood, who styles himself " Sur- 

 master of St Paul's School," the sixth edition of 

 which beai's date 1728, and is nothing more than 

 Comenius' book melted down into a thin 12mo. of 

 127 pages, with twenty-six cuts of a similar cha- 

 racter. Tliis rival pedagogue has a long preface 

 touching the merits of pictorial teaching ; and 

 although he does not name his great precursor, 

 he indulges in some depreciatory remarks upon 

 existing books of the class. We do not meet with 

 the Orbis Pictura again until 1777, when one Wm. 

 Jones, of Pluckley, having heard it lamented that 

 the book had fallen into disuse, had it revised and 

 published in the above year as the twelfth edition, 

 which is that now usually met with. J. O. 



* First edition : printed for J. Kirton, small 8vo., 1659, 

 with portrait of Comenius by Cross. In Chambers' Jour- 

 nal, April 21, 1849, there is an interesting account of the 

 educational schemes of our author. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC CORKESPONDENCE. 



Photography in India : Capt. Barr's Dark Slide for 

 Paper. — We have received with much pleasure, and 

 read with much interest, the 1st and 2nd Numbers of 

 The Journal of the Photographic Society of Bombay. They 

 contain papers of considerable practical value ; and there 

 can be no doubt that the Society will be the means of 

 preserving most truthful records of the antiquities and 

 curiosities of our Eastern Empire ; and of making our 

 "home-keeping" people thoroughly familiar with the 

 varied and majestic scenery of India, and the character- 

 istics of the varied races who inhabit it. The following 

 paper strikes us as one exhibiting great ingenuity, and 

 deserving the attention of photographers in England. 



" Description of Captain Barr's Dark Slide for the Paper 

 Process in the Camera. 



" The slide consists of a box of the required size in 

 length and breadth to fit the camera, and in depth about 

 two inches ; inside this slide, at top and bottom, is a roller 

 of wood of an inch in diameter. These rollers are placed 

 at a distance in the direction of the back of the slide, of 

 a quarter of an inch from the centres of the side boards of 

 the slide ; that is, they are at a distance of three quarters 

 of an inch from the back, and IJ inches from the front 

 sliding door ; between the rollers and the front sliding 

 door of the slide, and at a distance of one eighth of an 

 inch from it, is placed firmly a plate of glass. This glass 

 extends upwards to within half an inch of the upper 

 roller, and inwards to within half an inch of the lower 

 roller ; and is placed with reference to the lens in exactly 

 the same position that the focussing-glass of the camera 

 occupies ; through the side of the dark slide is a hole cor- 

 responding to one in the axis of the upper roller, the hole 

 in the axis is made square to receive a key for revolving 

 the roller ; through the side of the camera, is also a hole 

 through which the key enters. A similar square hole is 

 made in the axis of the lower roller, and corresponding 

 holes in the side of the slide and of the camera; into 

 this hole is fitted the square axis of a short roller of about 

 an inch in length, and corresponding exactly in diameter 

 with the inner rollers. 



" After the slide has been put into its place in the 

 camera, the key for revolving the upper roller and the 

 short roller just described are introduced in their places. 

 The rollers are both fitted into the dark slide so as to be 

 removable at pleasure. To use this dark slide prepare 

 your sensitive paper, say ten or twelve sheets ; have a 

 piece of thin black calico a little longer, say twelve inches 

 longer than your twelve sheets of paper ; and upon this 

 band of black calico place your sheets of prepared paper, 

 leaving intervals of about two inches between each two 

 papers, and attach the papers in any convenient manner 

 by their upper and lower edges to the calico. Now attach 

 the one end of the calico to the lower roller of the slide, 

 and roll it up, leaving just sufiicient of it unrolled to reach 

 the upper roller; pass this unrolled end over the glass 

 plate I have referred to, and then attach it to the upper 

 roller. Shut down the sliding door, and place the slide 

 in the camera ; fit the key to the upper roller as directed, 

 and the short outer roller to the lower one; over this 

 short roller wind a piece of tape the same number of 

 times as the calico inside is wound, and you are then 

 ready to proceed to work ; having arrived opposite the 

 view you wish to take, remove the key and the roller with 

 the tape upon it, which I call the index. Withdraw the 

 dark slide, and replace it by the focussing-glass ; having 

 focussed exactly, remove the glass, and replace the dark 

 slide, adjusting the key and index. Now turn the key 

 till the tape on this index shows you have one of your 



