450 



KNOWLEDGE. 



December, 1913. 



sun should be chosen, and the photograph taken as 

 near to the time of sunset or sunrise as the length 

 of the twilight will permit. The writer would par- 

 ticularly recommend this branch of work to 

 observers living in or near the tropics, where the 

 twilight is of short duration. For the actual study 

 of the changes in comets' tails the portrait-lens, on 

 account of its rapidity, is more suitable than the 

 anastigmat, though both may be used. 



The visual study of the paths and radiants of 

 meteors may very profitably be supplemented by 

 work with the camera. Owing to the rapidity of 

 their flight, only the brighter meteors will record 

 themselves, but a few definite lines on a measurable 

 plate will be of more value in determining the 

 position of a radiant than any number of loose 



statements based merely on eye-estimations. 

 Though not strictly speaking " stellar " in character, 

 comets and meteors have been included in this 

 article as being objects which are photographed 

 under essentially the same conditions as the stars 

 themselves. 



There are many other ways in which photography 

 can help the amateur astronomer. Its value as a 

 means of map-making is considerable. It is often 

 desirable, for the identification of faint satellites and 

 for other purposes, to have an accurate map of some 

 region which shall show all stars down to a fairly 

 low magnitude. To those who cannot afford to 

 buy the Franklin-Adams charts or the Astrographic 

 Atlas, a home-made map, made in an hour or two 

 with a portrait-lens, will often be very useful. 



THE ALCHEMICAL SOCIETY. 



At a meeting of the Alchemical Society held Friday 

 evening, November 14th, a paper was read by Madame 

 Isabelle de Steiger, entitled " The Hermetic 

 Mystery," the chair being occupied by the acting 

 president, Mr. H. Stanley Redgrave, B.Sc, F.C.S. 



Madame Isabelle de Steiger's interpretation of the 

 theories and aims of the ancient and mediaeval 

 alchemists differs radically from that accepted by 

 many students of the history of philosophy and 

 science, her views in the main agreeing with those 

 expressed in that well-known but exceedingly rare 

 work, " A Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic 

 Mystery and Alchemy." 



According to the lecturer, the doctrines under- 



lying Alchemy were the primitive doctrines at the 

 heart of every ancient religion. Alchemy, she 

 maintained, was not concerned with metals but with 

 man, whom the alchemists endeavoured spiritually 

 to perfect through a process analogous to that said 

 to have been discovered by Mesmer. The Alchemists, 

 she said, formed a sort of free secret order, and their 

 writings were cryptogrammatic, being intended to be 

 understood by one another only. They were couched 

 in the language of chemistry to mislead the ignorant, 

 on account of the danger attendant upon any 

 misuse of the processes with which they dealt. 



The full text of the lecture has been published in 

 the November number of the Society's Journal. 



THE EXHIBITION OF THE NATURE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. 



Some three years ago, through the initiative of Mr. 

 Carl Edwards, of Leeds, the Nature Photographic 

 Society came into existence, That there was a place 

 for it soon became evident. A large majority of the 

 leading nature photographers including Messrs. 

 Edward J. Bedford, Richard Kearton, F. Martin 

 Duncan, Oliver G. Pike, and John J. Ward, joined 

 the ranks of the members, and the organisation 

 became a distinct success, while a quarterly journal 

 entitled The Nature Photographer, has since 

 appeared regularly. If in the olden times all roads 

 led to Rome, nowadays most things find their way 

 to London, and last year the Annual Meeting of the 

 Nature Photographic Society took place in the metro- 

 polis, and what is more, the first exhibition of 

 photographs by members of the Society was held 

 during the months of October and November by the 

 courtesy of the Royal Photographic Society of Great 

 Britain at its house in Russell Square. It may be 

 said at once that an excellent series of pictures was 

 brought together and that Mr. H. Armytage Sanders, 

 who acted as organising secretary of the exhibition, 

 was able to fill all the space which had been kindly 

 placed at his disposal. As the movement in favour 

 of nature photography arose out of the interest which 

 was first of all taken in the hunting of British birds 



with the camera instead of the gun, it was to be ex- 

 pected that photographs of birds would be well repre- 

 sented. Of them we ought to mention particularly 

 the gannet landing at the nest taken by Mr. Charles 

 Kirk with a "Birdland" Camera, the adjutant bird 

 in two studies of expression by Mr. Edward J. Jacob, 

 who sent also a very beautiful picture of a swan. 

 Many of the movements which are caught by 

 the camera look quite unnatural and are far from 

 being like drawings, so that those who say that 

 nature photographs should always be what is called 

 artistic do not understand their value and are talk- 

 ing rank nonsense. Such past masters in the art of 

 bird photography as Mr. Bedford, Mr. Kearton, Mr. 

 Pike and Mr. Sanders, were also represented, and we 

 are glad to see that Miss Grace Kearton is following 

 in her father's footsteps. Fungi and flowers were 

 fairly well represented ; the reproductions of Mr. 

 Essenhigh Corke's colour-photographs were very 

 striking. The president, Mr. Henry Irving, the 

 secretary, Mr. Carl Edwards, as well as Mr. 

 Somerville Hastings, sent pictures of fungi. Mr. 

 Hugh Main illustrated the life-histories of insects 

 and the habits of millipedes : his photographs of 

 the musk beetle we are able to reproduce on 

 page 451. 



