CLEVER OPTICAL DELUSION

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2123, 4 July 1907, Page 1

CLEVER OPTICAL DELUSION

Visitors at the Museum of Natural History in New York arc soon to have an opportunity to see something entirely novel in tho way of pictures that have all the appearance of real life. As they puss along a corridor they will look through a series of windows, and will behold landscapes and birds of different kinds, the view extending seemingly over immense distances. '

Of course it is a trick of optics, but certainly most ingenious and admirable. In each instance the scenery is painted on canvas, and the picture, exquisitely executed, merges imperceptibly into a real foreground, after the manner of the panorama. Each, scene occupies a sort of box not more than, fifteen feet square by nine feet in height, the back became concave; but the effect is so artfully contrived that one is easily deceived into imagining that the prospect extends over many miles. For example, one of the scenes represents Pelican Island, in the Indian River, Florida, a place frequented by thousands of breeding pelicans, which are there protected by the Government against interference by self-styled sportsmen or other depredators. Utmost pains have been taken to reproduce tho aspect of the surroundings with a literal frankness, and over. acres of territory the birds are seen on tlieir nests or feeding their young. In the foreground are real stuffed and life-like pelicans similarly engaged, with sand and clumps of vegetation to help out the illusion.

Another scene shows sandhill cranes in a swamp, their eggs in a nest that looks as if it floated on the water. Of course, the water is a mirror, and there are real rushes' and water plants in the foreground, merging into the painted vegetation of the middle distance.