June 1, 1896.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



129 



is not maintained by a more ideal conception or truthful 

 rendering of nature, it is to be found in the more prosaic 

 qualities of technical skill. 



On entering the gallery the attention is immediately 

 arrested by Mr. J. M. Swan's " Jaguar and Macaw," in 

 which we find a strength and freedom of colouring rarely 

 attempted by one who makes water his only medium. Mr. 

 George Clausen's " Tired Mower " is one of the most 

 admired pictures here ; yet the technique is poor, and the 

 figure, though well drawn, is leaning on the scythe in au 

 impossible manner. Mr. Clausen would certainly not have 

 fallen into this error had he included modelling in his 

 studies. Mr. Ernest A. Waterlow's little sketches are 

 unsurpassed as truthful copies of nature ; look, for 

 instance, at " The Fields in June," a very lovely bit of 

 sunlit meadows. In "Racing Nymphs," Mr. Weguelin 

 gives us a delightful conception, in which fancy, draughts- 

 manship, and technical skill combine with equal merit. 

 The works of Miss Clara Montalba, despite the repeated 

 trick of composition and colour, are attractive bsyond most 

 of their compeers. The exhibits of Mr. Herkomer, Sir 

 John Gilbert, Mr. Macbeth, Mr. David Murray, and Mr. 

 E. J. Poynter, aU hold a high place in this year's exhibition ; 

 and the same may be said of those sent by less well-known 

 painters in oil. Mr. Walter Crane, one of our greatest 

 cosmopolitans in the art world, sends one picture — 

 " Britomart." Here, in places, we find the drawing 

 weak, the modelling weaker, and the colouring none too 

 pleasing ; but behind all is the personality of Mr. Crane, 

 with such a strength of conception and depth of artistic 

 feeling, bred of wide sympathies, that the picture is one of 

 the most striking and interesting in the gallery. Mr, 

 Abbey — whose illustrations find the most devoted admirers 

 in the old and new world — also sends one picture : a daring 

 bit of composition, overstepping, in many ways, and with 

 the best of results, the traditional bounds within which 

 the water-colour school has found all possible require- 

 ments for the making of a good picture. 



The exhibits of Mr. Carl Haag, Mr. R. Thome Waite, 

 Mr. W. Callow, Mr. E. Walker, and others, are, in many 

 cases, equal in merit to those we notice above ; but still 

 the honours are held by those who have made their mark 

 in some other branch of the kindred arts. And as to the 

 reason of this '? It is not stating the case fairly to say 

 that the superior talent displayed is only what might be 

 expected from artists of well-known high capabihties, for 

 were not these same capabilities obtained, at least partly, 

 by variations of the method of study ? The greater under- 

 standing of his own language comes to him who is most 

 intimately acquainted with that of others ; and, similarly, 

 the colourist can bring to bear on his canvas that know- 

 ledge which he can obtain only by his eflbrts on paper, 

 and rice rersa. 



We fear the general impression to be gathered from 

 the above is the superiority of oils as a medium for the 

 student ; but we must point out that Turner and others 

 used water for their closer studies, and found oil the better 

 medium for the expression of their ideal. We might carry 

 these inquiries into the other branches of the arts, and 

 with less satisfactory results, for the more mechanical and 

 less ideal the art, the more we find on the part of the 

 workman a tendency to specialization. 



StiOTW Notes. 



— • — 



M. LippMANN has given a very interesting account of 

 his experiments on colour photography before the Royal 

 Society, and last month he also gave a discourse on the 

 subject at the Royal Institution. He exhibited the pictures 



in natural colours which he has obtained, the vivid 

 character of the tints being very striking. His earliest 

 attempts were photographs of stained-glass windows, and 

 his later work includes pictures of flowers, and landscapes 

 showing the tints of brickwork and stonework, the green 

 colour of leaves, etc. The method depends in principle on 

 obtaining stationary light -vibrations in a sensitive film by 

 means of a metallic mirror of mercury placed behind it. 

 An interesting illustration of the length of waves of light 

 was given by M. Lippmann in his lecture at the Royal 

 Institution, when he stated that five hundred of the 

 stationary waves of light, arranged in succession, can exist 

 in a film of the thickness of ordinary note-paper. The 

 dimensions involved may be realized by imagining a 

 building of five hundred storeys, the height from base to 

 roof, with its successive tiers, being comprised within the 

 thickness of a sheet of paper. 



Observations made by M. Perrotin on Mount Mounier, 

 at an elevation of about nine thousand feet above the sea, 

 have convinced him that the period of the rotation of the 

 planet Venus is equal to that of her revolution round the 

 sun, the time of both being two hundred and twenty-five 

 days or less. The observations were carried out in 



December of last year, and in February, 1896. 



« 



" Ashtonian," writing from Ashton-under-Lyne, wishes 

 to know (1) why the honey and pollen of poisonous plants 

 like the foxglove are not detrimental to bees visiting the 

 flowers ; and, also, (2) the reason for certain of the ray florets 

 of the daisy being tinged with red, while the rest are white. 



(1) The nectar of a number of plants is poisonous — a 

 quality shared also, no doubt, by their pollen. The prin- 

 cipal constituent of honey is grape sugar ; pollen grains 

 can usually be detected in honey, and small quantities of 

 other substances are present to which are due the peculiar 

 colour, flavour, or fragrance by which special kinds of 

 honey are distinguished. These substances sometimes 

 impart narcotic or other deleterious qualities. Bees fre- 

 quently fall out of gladiolus flowers in a state of helpless 

 mtoxication, and are therefore susceptible ; but as the 

 greater portion of the honey and pollen gathered by a bee 

 is disgorged but little altered into the cells of the comb, 

 only a small proportion of the poisonous principle can in 

 most cases be absorbed into the insect's system. As, 

 however, the larvit are fed on honey and pollen, it is 

 almost certain that bees must to some extent possess an 

 immunity against poisons of this class. 



(2) There appears to be a law of progressive colouration 

 traceable in flowers, from the primitive yellow of the 

 simpler blossoms through white, red, and purple to the 

 deep blue of the highly specialized types. Most flowers 

 are capable of reverting to the more primitive colours 

 through which the species may be supposed to have passed 

 in the course of its evolution, but they are apparently 

 unable to give rise to an entirely new colour belonging to 

 a stage of development to which the family has not j'et 

 attained. In the case of the daisy it is ditiicult to say 

 whether the red at the tip of the ray florets is a new or a 

 primitive colour due to reversion ; the circumstance that 

 the red appears at the extremities of the petals favours the 

 view that it marks a new departure in the colouration of 

 the species, for, as a rule, new colours appear at the 

 outside, reversion tints at the centre of the blossom. But 

 by cultivation the white ray florets may be converted into 

 red, as in one variety of the garden daisy ; and this fact 

 accords fully better, perhaps, with the theory of retrogres- 

 sion. On this view the red tinge represents what once 

 was the colour of the ligulate llorets. Increase of light in 

 many instances is known to intensify the colotir of flowers. 



