Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/110

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NOTES BY THE WAY.

Paris during the Siege.' The pages of the paper containing communications to relatives in Paris were photographed on pieces of thin and almost transparent paper about an inch and a half in length by an inch in width. The photographs were sent to Bordeaux, thence by carrier pigeon to Paris, where they were magnified by the aid of the magic lantern, and the messages sent off to the places indicated by the advertisers. From a note made by Mr. John Macray in the number of the 8th of December. 1860, it would appear that Lord Brougham was the discoverer of photography. Mr. Thoms, on the llth of October, 1879, in a pathetic appeal to photographers, asks them to make a small return for the service rendered to photography in its early days by Notes and Queries:—

"Among the collection of photographic portraits of old friends, literary and personal, which I possess, many are fast fading away several of friends now no longer living. Is it possible to revive them? Surely the Photographic Society ought to have among its men of science remedy for this great evil, or some simple mode of so printing photographs as to ensure their not fading."

In the indexes to the eighth and ninth volumes the plan was adopted of denoting unanswered queries with an asterisk, but the increasing number of queries rendered the labour of such a record too great. The indexes to the first three Series were the work of James Yeowell.Mr. James Yeowell, and the plan and methods originated by him have been carefully preserved in the succeeding issues. Of his services to the publication I shall again make mention.

Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862.Notes and Queries has from the first taken advantage of current events in order to deal with them from its own. special standpoint. The opening of the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations in 1851, and that of the Exhibition of 1862, are referred to in its columns. On the 6th of December, 1851, "an imperishable monument" of the great gathering of the nations is reviewed 'The Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue,' together with Robert Hunt's 'Handbook to the Official Catalogues.' The three octavo volumes of the former work contain an account of every article shown by the fifteen thousand exhibitors, illustrated with twelve hundred woodcuts. The publishers, Messrs. Spicer & Sons, were the exhibitors of a large roll of paper 46 inches wide and 2,500 yards in length; this was the first time that paper had been made beyond the then ordinary lengths, and it attracted much attention. The daily papers are now all printed from long rolls, that of The Times being two miles in length.

Death of the Duke of Wellington: Times memoir.On Tuesday, the 14th of September, 1852, the Duke of Wellington died suddenly at Walmer Castle, and Notes and Queries, in the number published on the 25th, makes reference to the memoir of the Duke that had been given in The Times, the first portion, twenty-one columns in length, appearing on the morning following his decease, "a memoir worthy alike of its subject and of the journal in which it