SMELL OF LILY

Evening Star, Issue 23093, 20 October 1938, Page 20

SMELL OF LILY

PHOTOGRAPH SHOWN They have photographed smells and are showing the results at this year’s annual exhibition, the eighty-third, of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, writes a special correspondent of the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ AI. Breitenaeh, of Paris, exhibits two one the perfume of the lily the othei of camphor. They look very odd, rather like oil upset on a wet roadway, and one would never guess what they fire. The official explanation goes this way : “ The emission of an odour involves volatilisation of material. If an odoriferous material is enclosed in a cell a few millimetres above a clean mercury surface, it is possible to collect on the surface of the mercury a monomolecular layer of the volatilising or odoriferous substance. “ If the mercury surface initially is covered with talc powder, the gradual formation of the moiiomolecules layer may bo observed as the talc is gradually pushed away from tho point immediately below the specimen of material.

“ The photographs illustrate observations of this sort on the emanations from camphor and the lily. From observations of the layers formed, the actual weight of collected emanation may be calculated.” Another arresting exhibit is ‘ The Grumbler —Self-portrait of My Appendix,’ by Percy Murden. Taken by X-ray, this is an extremely self-reveal-ing piece of work, and enough to make anyone introspective.

The exhibition forms an astonishing testimony to the versatility of the 1938 camera. ‘ Shuttle in Loom,’ with an exposure of l-oO,oooth of a second, a radiograph of a rose—it might as well have been called * The Anatomy of Beauty ’ —‘ The Hind Leg of a Blow fly,’ here are stimulating glimpses of a camera-revealed brave old world. Among the extensive rcction devoted to more familiar studies the;e is nothing more appealing than the ‘ Spilocuseus Nudicaudatus,’ by H. Chargois. This title covers two pictures of _ a female opossum and her offspring, which are a sheer delight.