762 General Notes, [September, 



the east side of Wyde Bay on the northern coast of West Spitz- 

 bergen, where Nordenskiold and Palander wintered in 1X72-3, 

 and the expedition expects to use the building then erected on 

 Polhem Island. There will be thirteen in the party. 



The British have finally selected Fort Rae for their station. 



MICROSCOPY. 1 



Microscopic Dexterity of the Cameo Cutters. — One of the 

 best examples of adroit manipulation under the simple micro- 

 scope is the operation of cameo cutting as described in an article 

 in Our Home and Science Gossip : 



" A visit to a cameo cutter's workshop found him seated at a 

 table covered with tools, varying from a triangular-pointed steel 

 instrument to the most delicate pointed bits of steel wire fastened 

 in handles. Very fine files and knitting needles, set in wooden 

 grips and ground to infinitesimal points, figured in the lot. On a 

 pad of leather, before the cameo cutter, was a block of wood just 

 big enough to be grasped with his hand, and cemented to the 

 middle of it was an oval object that looked like a piece of alabas- 

 ter, just big enough to make a seal for the finger of a man who did 

 not object to wearing large rings. Upon this the artist was just 

 finishing a copy, with a pencil pointed to needle fineness, of a 

 photograph in profile of a gentleman, which was leaned against a 

 little photograph easel before him. Having finished the outline, 

 he laid his pencil by, and taking up a fine wire tool he scratched 

 the pencil mark around with it. Then he took a darning needle 

 with a sharp point and scratched the line deeper. He worked 

 with a magnifying glass at his eye, and stopped continually to in- 

 spect the progress of his work with critical minuteness. Then he 

 went at it again, working slowly, scratching over the same line 

 again and again, and always examining after each scratch. He 

 changed his tools as he went on, and from the darning needle de- 

 scended to a trifling little fragment of steel wire, not as thick as 

 an ordinary sewing needle, set in a slender handle. With this he 

 scratched and re-scratched, until the lines he had drawn with his 

 pencil had quite vanished, and a thin, fine streak of a dark color 

 had marked the outline of the head he had been tracing his way 

 around. Next he took one of his burin-like tools and com- 

 menced again. This time he worked on the outside of the out- 

 line, cutting and scraping at the surface until the white turned 

 gray, then brown, and finally vanished, leaving the face in relief, 

 surrounded by a black ground — that is, the portrait remained in- 

 tact in the white substance which formed the outer layer of^the 

 cameo, while it had been cut away around it to the lower or carle 

 layer. The portrait or figure is then modulated upon its surface 

 until it assumes the roundness of nature. The edges are left 

 square to the dark ground. This is necessary, as, if they are 

 i edited by Dr. R. H. Ward, Troy, X. Y. 



