Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/589

Rh archery and the paraphernalia of the archers than has yet been done, that "the remarkable persistence of certain forms of arrow-release among various nations leads me to believe that, in identifying the affinities of past races, the method of using the bow may form another point in establishing or disproving relationships. By knowing with more certainty the character and limitation of the forms of arrow-release, another clew may be got as to the date and nature of fragments of sculpture representing the hand. The peculiar attitude of the archer might lead to the interpretation of armless statues."

Workingmen's Co-operation Organizations.—Mr. A. H. Dyke Acland, M. P., made some statements in the British Association concerning the operation of workingmen's co-operative organizations. After describing the plans on which the organizations are formed, he said that the result of their operation has been a gradual saving of capital, till there is often more than can be employed in the business; indeed, the difficulty with many societies is too much capital, not too little. The increase in the business of the societies between 1865 and 1885 was from about £3,000,000 per annum to more than £20,000,000 per annum. At the present time productive or manufacturing business of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 a year, on a large or small scale, is carried on, the capital of which comes mainly from the distributive or retail societies. The two wholesale societies are the property of the retail stores, which have created them for their own convenience for the supply of articles direct to their shops from England and abroad. The English wholesale society like the retail societies has had to refuse capital which its members (that is, the retail stores) would willingly have deposited with it. It has adhered mainly to the work of the merchant, and has done comparatively little in the way of manufacturing. Some of the large stores have erected cornmills and batteries, and many societies employ tailors, dress-makers, and the like, and some are now begining to rent farms. In the large stores there is a great demand for milk, butter, and agricultural produce. These facts throw light on the questions of the possibility of the accumulation of large sums of capital by workingmen; of the successful utilization of such capital by workingmen in industrial enterprise; and of the improvement of the position of the worker or the lessening of the assumed antagonism of employer and employed in consequence of such successful utilization of capital. In the discussion on Mr. Acland's paper, Mr. Evans, representing the Co-operative Congress Board, said it was remarkable to how great an extent the progress of co-operation coincided with the decline of the influence of socialistic teaching.

The Preservation of Water-Colors.—In a paper "On the Fading of Water-Colors," read in the British Association, Professor W. N. Hartley pointed out that colors consist of mineral substances, for the most part of a stable character, or of organic substances comprising stable colors and unstable and changeable colors. Excepting ultramarine, bodies of the former class may be considered unalterable unless they contain lead or mercury; those of the second class may be considered alterable under certain conditions. The action of light on these two classes of substances, when it is capable of affecting them, is different. On mineral substances the red rays cause oxidation; the oxidizing power decreases as the rays extend more toward the yellow; becomes null in the yellowish-green; is reversed and becomes a reducing power in the blue, and this is intensified in the violet and ultra-violet. On organic substances the action of light is an oxidizing one throughout, continuously increasing in power (except in the green, where it is diminished) through the red and yellow into the violet. The action is not confined to oxidation, for bodies of complex and unstable character may be changed in composition, and, being resolved into more stable compounds, changed in color or rendered colorless. In order to preserve water-color drawings in which delicate yellow and red tints arc largely used, they should be kept in a very subdued light, preferably of a yellow tint, such as is yielded by daylight passing through blinds of unbleached linen. The action of the violet rays is from two to three times as powerful as that of the red and yellow, and the