PHOTOGRAPHY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 917, 14 February 1882, Page 3

PHOTOGRAPHY.

The instantaneous method of taking photographs has recently been brought to a high pitch of perfection. Mr Thompson has employed it in catching some of the winter scenes on the frozen Thames during the late storm ; and MiMarsh, of Henley, has transfixed for us the graceful attitudes of swans gliding on the summer stream by Maidenhead and Taplow. The photographing of the Great Western express train, the “ Flying Dutchman,” by this artist, as it rushed through Twyford railway station at a speed of sixty miles an hour, is a still more import mt feat, and novel of its kind. All the details of the engine were distinctly pourtrayed, although the exposure of the sensitive plate could not have been longer than a fraction of a second. The rapidity of execution now ah-ryed at is-, however, still better shown by the photographing of a lightning flash in its own light, recently accomplished by Mr Crowe, of Liverpool, With.his camera situated at Dingle, Mr Crowe succeeded in getting an excellent portrait of a long zig-zag flash which leapt out from a cloud over St. Philemon’s Church, at the moment the bell-tower was rent in pieces. According to measurement, the flash was about fifty inches broad, and must have been a very powerful one. Mr de la Rue calculated that it would take over three millions of his galvanic cells to produce a spark, that is, a lightning flash, one mile long ; yet Faraday has proved that there is as much electricity in a single drop of water as in an-ordinary lightning flash. Some idea of the energy that is quiescent in a dewdrop may be gathered from the remarkable case o f lightning stroke just reported from the Cape of Good Hope—a case unique in military annals. Towards the end of the year, while the Diamond Field Horse were on the march to the scene of operations in Basutoland, a terrible thunderstorm broke over them. The rain fell in sheets and the lightning apeared to be continues. At last a tremendous flash struck the troop, flinging seventeen horses W’th their riders to the ground, and killing ten men and five of the animals on the spot. The remaining seven were dangerously stunned, and it was long before their animation could be restored. Their clothes were torn to shreds by the force of the discharge, and the metal bits and stirrup-irons were discolored.—Home paper.