PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLORS.

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 9, 30 December 1893, Page 12

PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLORS.

Nature’s Living Tints Faithfully Reproduced by the Camera. Photography in colors is a dream that has inflamed many besides the mere amateur and the enthusiast. Like several other delusions that will never die, it has been reported a fait accompli over and over again; yet the world still waits for colored photographs and waits in vain, if what it expects are correctly tinted reproductions, taken direct from nature. The best that is

said to have ever been done in tbis respect, and it is very wonderful, is the so called “composite heliochromy” of Mr. Frederic Ives of Philadelphia. In this process three pictures are taken simultaneously on one plate, through colored screens of special construction, by means of which each image is made to represent one of the three fundamental color sensations produced on the eye. These three images are superimposed one oh another by a triple optical lantern, or in an instrument of highly ingenious construction called the "heliochromoscope,” of Mr. Ives’ own invention, by means of which the original object is shown not only in apSarent relief, as in the familiar stereoscope, ut also in the exact colors and shades of nature. These pictures, speaking vulgarly, are pot colored photographs. The three actual images on each plate are black and white as usual, with a difference merely as regards the distribution of light and shade in each; it is only when they are combined and when the proper conditions are restored that the "illusory effects of color are given. The heliochromoscope is a small square box with an eyepiece, somewhat resembling a camera. In exhibiting specimens, after turning the instrument toward the light, Mr. Ives slipped in front of it what appeared to be an ordinary photographic negative with three pictures on it arranged in trefoil. This, however, he asserted, was not a negative, but a simple positive taken on glass instead of paper. The images were not colored, but merely differed from one another in regard to the arrangement of light and shade.

On putting one’s eye to the eyepiece there appeared infull.relief an absolutely perfect representation of a dish of fruit; glossy red apples, mottled yellow bananas, and a luscious bunch of green grapes covered with a tempting bloom that made one’s mouth water more than all the efforts of Dutch genre painters could ever do. Several similar objects followed; then came photographs of colored pictures, of oil paintings, of Swiss scenery, in all the living oolorsoi nature.

The Hottest Spot on Earth. The hottest region on the earth's surface is on the southwestern coast of Persia, on the border of the Persian gulf, judging by the following from an exchange: “For 40 consecutive days in the months of July and August the mercury has been known to stand above 100 degrees in the shade night and day, and to run up as high as 130 degrees in the middle of the afternoon. At Bahrein, in the center of the most torrid part of this most torrid belt, as though it were nature’s intention to make the place as unbearable as possible, water from wells is something unknown. Great! shafts have been sunk to a depth of 100,200,1 800 and even 500 feet, but always with the same result, no water. This serious draw-, back notwithstanding, a comparatively numerous population contrives to live! there, thanks to copious springs which burst forth from the bottom of the gulf more than a mile from the shore. ( “The water from these springs is obtained in a most curious and novel manner. • ‘Machadores,’ whose sole occupation is that of furnishing the people of Bahrein with the life giving fluid, repair to that portion of the gulf where the springs are situated and bring away with them hundreds of skin bags full of the water each day. The water of the gulf where the springs burst forth is nearly 200 feet deep, but these ‘machadores’ (divers) manage to fill their goatskin sacks by diving to the bottom and holding the mouths of the bags over the fountain jets; this, too, without allowing the salt water of the gulf to mix with it. The source of these submarine fountains is thought to be in the hills of Osmond, 400 or 500 miles away. Being situated at the bottom of the gulf, it is a mystery how they were ever discovered, but the fact remains that they have been known since the dawn of history.”

A Brief Epitaph. A facetious story is told of a pauper who, having died in a workhouse, was to be» buried in the most economical fashion. The master proposed to inscribe over his tomb-1 stone;

THOMAS THORPS, HIS CORPSE.

The guardians at the next meeting of the board forbade such a profligate expenditure of the rates and ordered the epitaph to be curtailed thus:

THORPS’ CORPSE.

Bees and Birds Court Society. Bees and birds court the society of man—that is, they seek the locality where fields and gardens abound, for they fare better when human industry extorts from the soil the products upon which they subsist. A Maine bee culturist says it is the rarest thing in the world to find bees away from the settlements or from openings where flowers grow. It is in the small patches of forest they are oftenest found and generally not far from the edge of the woods. It is the same with birds. There are no song birds in the northern Maine wilderness and scarcely anything that can be called bird life. Birds cluster around towns and villages.