House and Garden 
inch.” The Nelson column, close by, 
is worth £50,000, and the statue of 
King George III, a little way down Pall 
Mall, cost £4,000. The Albert Hall 
and Royal Aquarium are both worth 
about £250,000, but the Crystal Palace 
cost more than three times the value of 
both of these. Earl’s Court, the great 
show rivaling the palace, has millions’ 
worth of treasures, and even when it is 
empty the twenty-five acres of gardens 
and buildings are worth £300,000. 
Imagine buying the Tower, the Holborn 
viaduct, the miles of sewers, walks and 
pavements; the various markets, of which 
four—which are for cattle—actually 
cost £10,000,000 between them; think 
of the hospitals and schools and churches 
and fancy the market value of the parks 
cut into city lots. The entrances alone 
of Hyde Park are said to have cost 
nearly $ 1,500,000. Does the statement 
made by the English writer seem extrav¬ 
agant, that all the coined money in the 
world to-day would not adequately rep¬ 
resent the value of what the poor can see 
and use in London ?—Philadelphia Press. 
DECORATING SURFACES WITH COLOR 
A NEW method of decorating surfaces 
^ with color has been devised by M. 
Charles Henry, which promises to have 
an extended development. Every one 
knows that if a drop of oil, or of spirit of 
turpentine, is allowed to fall on water, 
it will spread over the surface of the 
water, showing iridescent colors as the 
pellicle extends, and becomes thin enough 
to cause interferences in the light reflec¬ 
ted from the upper and lower surfaces. 
Sometimes these iridescent colors are 
very brilliant, particularly with turpen¬ 
tine or essential oils, but they disappear, 
of course, with the evaporation of the 
volatile substance. M. Henry’s inven¬ 
tion consists in adding to the volatile 
spirit some substance which, as the 
spirit evaporates, will remain fixed, at 
the same time that it retains the prop¬ 
erties of the spirit pellicle. For this 
purpose he employs bitumen, or resins 
of certain kinds, dissolving them in tur¬ 
pentine, and allowing a drop of the 
solution to fall on water. The solution 
spreads, as turpentine alone would do, 
but, as the turpentine evaporates, a thin 
permanent film of resin is left, which 
exhibits the iridescent colors of the 
original liquid. 1 his permanent film 
is then taken up on paper, to which it 
The Russwin Unit Lock Set 
No. 2150 Napo 
School L’Art Nouveau 
Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company 
1201 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia 
26 West Twenty-sixth Street, New York 
FACTORIES AT NEW BRITAIN, CONN. 
- A 
Decorative 
Cloths 
THE 
HOLLISTON 
MILLS 
Used by the highest class decora¬ 
tors in the country and found 
superior to any other wall covering 
NORWOOD, MASS. 
U. S. A. 
Absolutely sanitary—will not hold dust—colors are fast, lasting and match perfectly. 
New York Office No. 67 Fifth Avenue 
SEND FOR SAMPLE BOOKS—FREE 
_ 
J 
In writing to advertisers please mention House and Garden. 
3 
