Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/735

Rh photographer, gives so delicately correct a relation of tones. It is to the proper use of the proper means at their disposal that photographers need stimulating. The most important of these means are such as are directed to securing the proper light effect and relations of light values, and those which give the focusing and relative interests of the subject. Some of the simplest facts of light are overlooked by photographers, who have been governed by untrue and misleading conventions and dogmas concerning gradation and brilliancy. Instead of deep black prints usually in favor among them, it is of first-rate importance in landscape pictures to keep the shadows light. To repeat the impression of outdoor light the whole picture must be luminous, and not heavy and dark, as is the effect of the ordinary style. Further, the shadows when the sun shines are lighter than when he is obscured. The printing medium employed is an important consideration. Mr. Davison finds excellent qualities in the newest extra rough-surfaced papers. Photography is good under suitable conditions of light for representing transient action and effects. Photography has preeminently more of painting qualities than any other monochrome process. It is not specially limited to nor compelled to emphasize facts of form. It gives form by means of tone against tone—the best means of rendering it—and its truth of form is unlimited. It is equal to any other black-and-white process. In nothing more than closed forms is the delicacy of its tonal discriminations shown. The quality of naturalness will tell in the long run. Men will weary of emphasis, and graphic artists will leave past history, archaeology, and fiction to literature or scientific drawing.

A Voodoo Initiation.—A paper was communicated to the International Folk-lore Congress in London by Miss Owen on Voodoo Magic, to the mysteries of which she alone among white women had been initiated. The ceremony of initiation began with a walk at midnight, barefooted and bareheaded, to a fallow field. The author had to walk backward to the field, and when there, to pull up, with her hand behind her, a weed by the roots. She was then bidden to run home and throw the weed under her bed, to be left there till sunrise. Next, the weed had to be stripped of its leaves and made into a little packet, to be worn under the right arm for nine days. At the end of this time the leaves of the packet had to be scattered to the four winds, a few being thrown at a time over the right shoulder as the novice turned round and round, so that they might fall north, south, east, and west. When this was done the novice was ready for instruction. She learned that the preeminently lucky number which, when woven into incantations, was irresistible, was four times four times four; while ten was the unlucky number. After this a knowledge of the value of certain vegetable remedies and poisons had to be acquired. Charms were divided into four degrees. The first were good charms, the hardest to work, because good is always more difficult to practice than evil; the second were bad charms and fetiches made in the name of the devil; the third had special reference to bodily ailments; and the fourth related to what were called "commanded things," such as earth and pieces of stick. After each lesson both pupil and teacher had to get drunk, either by drinking whisky or by swallowing tobacco-smoke. To be thoroughly equipped the novitiate must possess a conjuring-stone—a stone black, kidney-shaped, and very rare. These stones were supposed to operate most rapidly when the moon was full or just beginning to wane. At other times, if the stones were not efficacious enough, their potency could be stimulated by a libation of whisky.

Cremation in Japan.—We are indebted to a correspondent of the London Spectator for the following interesting account of this method of disposing of the dead in Meguro, Tokeigo. It appears that cremation is the general custom among the "Monto sect of the Buddhists," a highly enlightened branch of Japanese Buddhism, which holds to the immortality of the soul as one of its leading tenets. "The building is of plaster, with an earthen floor, with stone supports for bodies. The chimneys are wide, and are carried to a considerable height, and there is no escape of disagreeable effluvium over the neighborhood. The bodies in the ordinary wooden chests which are used for burial are placed