Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/307

 9th 8. IV. Nov. 4, '99.] 365 NOTES AND QUERIES. though far removed from the busy world of letters), derive from the perusal of ' Notes and Queries.' " Mr. Thorns adds : " How many a pertinent Note, suggestive Query, and apt Reply have reached us from the same remote quarters !" Reference is also made to the good service rendered to men of letters here at home, as well as to a goodly list of works of learning and research, such as Cunningham's ' Hand- book of London Past and Present,' " pub- lished when we had been but a few months in existence, down to Wycliffe's' Three Treatises on the Church,' recently edited by the Rev. Dr. Todd." Many suggestions have been made by contributors from time to time with a view to increasing the usefulness of Notes and Queries. Among these was one made by Mr. '. A. Carrington on the 15th of November, N. & Q.' would have great value if the contributors of 1856, that additional Notes (Queries do not signify) would give their names." This elicited from "C." on the 6th of December a reply against the proposal:— " Those who please may, and many do sign, and others who give no name are as well known as if they did : but, as a general rule the absence of the name is, I am satisfied, best. It tends to brevity- it obviates personalities—it allows a freer intercom- munication of opinion and criticism." Then "C." closes with a prediction that must have set the editor all of a tremble: " If we were all to give our names ' N. & Q.' would, in three weeks, be a cock-pit." Notes and Queries during the first few years took up a wide range of subjects. It was the first journal to open its pages to a record of photographic discovery and progress, and gave full instructions for the successful prac- tice of photography. Among contributors on this subject was Dr. Diamond. He was the first to take a negative and print from it a positive copy of an old manuscript. Mr. Thorns would often mention with what delight Sir Frederic Madden examined the first speci- mens, as he saw every line, letter, and con- traction copied with a truthfulness no human hand could approach, and learnt that, the negative once accurately taken, copies of it might be produced in any number. Mr. Thorns always felt that his friend Dr. Diamond's share in photographic discoveries had not been sufficiently recognized; and I can well imagine how he would have put on one of his humorous smiles and styled the jubilee celebration of photography a truly "Dia- mond " one. Notes and Queries continued to allow much space to photographers until the science of photography had sufficiently advanced for them to have a journal of their own, so that the early numbers contain a full history of its progress. The advertisements of the various firms who dealt in the chemicals and apparatus required are full of interest. A note is made of the fact that Yarmouth was the first town to adopt photography for the purpose of copying Corporation records. It is also recorded that George Shaw Lefevre, being present at the fall of Sebastopol on the 8th of September, 1855, took photo- graphs immediately after the Russian re- treat. The views, twelve in number, were published in aid of the Nightingale Fund. A remarkable use of photography in time of war is noted in the number of the 4th of February, 1871 : 'How the Times was sent to 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 num- ber of the 8th of December, 1860, it would appear that Lord Brougham was the dis- coverer of photography. Mr. Thorns, on the 11th of October, 1879, in a pathetic appeal to photographers, asks them to make a small return for the service rendered to photo- graphy 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 Mr. James Yeowell, and the plan and methods originated by him have been care- fully preserved in the succeeding issues. Of his services to the publication I shall again make mention. 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