WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 605 
WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 
Twenty years ago, to have one's likeness taken was a trying ordeal. The 
patient to be operated on was placed in as strained an attitude as the ingenuity 
of the photographer could devise; his head fixed in something resembling a vise; 
he was cautioned not to wink for a length of time which seemed to depend on the 
state of the photographer's temper; and then in the course of a few weeks he 
received pictures of a staring idiot supposed to be himself. All who were at all 
proud of their personal appearance — all women and most men — were disgusted 
with the art. Now all is changed; the operation is generally over in a second or 
two ; freckles, pimples, and cross-eyes are improved away, and everybody is sur- 
prised how comely he is. This rapid progress in the art of photography is to 
some extent due to improvements in lenses and various mechanical appliances, 
but more especially to the discovery that the salts of silver in combination with 
gelatine yield a far more sensitive plate than could ever be obtained by the old 
collodion process. 
Within the last two years some remarkable photographs have been taken 
which show the wonderful perfection to which the art has attained. Likenesses 
of restless children, crying or laughing, are now so common as hardly to need 
..mention ; ^en the act of kissing, transitory as it is, is sufficiently prolonged to 
enable a photograph to be taken, the momentary rest, when lips meet lips, are 
enough for the artist's purposes, j But movements far more rapid than the act, of 
kissing {which, after all, is often^ot so very transitory) are now seized by pho- 
tography. Athletes performing in mid-air, birds flying, the course of projectiles, 
wave% breaking on the coast, have all been photographed with a definition and 
clearness that leaves little to be desired. Photos of the Irish mail, rushing along 
at the rate of forty-five miles an hour, show the outlines perfectly defined, while 
the spokes of the engine-wheels are plainly delineated, proving the operation to 
have been so rapid that the wheels had not time to move any appreciable dis- 
tance. Perhaps, however, the most remarkable photographs of moving objects 
are those obtained by Mr. Muybridge of horses running and jumping; in these, 
positions of the Umbs are shown which are far too transitory for the human eye 
to detect ; what the eye sees in watching a horse running is an average of the 
successive positions assumed by the horse's legs; photography alone can give an 
accurate idea of their position at any definite pomt of time. The attitudes shown 
in photographs seem at first sight to be absurd, and certainly differ very much 
from representations by engravers and painters ; photographs show the real posi- 
tions at certain moments of time, while painters depict, and rightly too, the ap- 
parent positions. 
To the astronomer the art is invaluable, and some of the most remarkable 
discoveries in astronomy have been made by its aid. Large photos of the Sun 
are taken every day it is visible at Greenwich and elsewhere, and thus a perma- 
