WONDERFUL PHOTOGRAPHY.--Dr. H. G. Piffard exhibited in New York to a society of amateur photographers a new method of taking instantaneous photographs by means of a brilliant light made by sprinkling ten or fifteen grains of magnesium powder on about six grains of gun-cotton. When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take a good photograph. It will do the same if flashed out of a pistol; so that a citizen may have his revolver with a small camera on the barrel and by flashing the gun-cotton out of his pistol he can make a photograph of any burglar or robber in the dark before he fires a bullet.
WOODEN CLOTH.--An Austrian has patented a process for boiling wood and cleaving it into fibres that may be spun into threads which may be woven.
THE PHYLLOXERA pest, which has wrought such havoc among vineyards throughout Europe, has invaded California also. France has lost many millions, and has offered a reward of 300,000 francs for the discovery of a remedy. A Turkish farmer is said to have discovered accidentally that the remedy is to plant Sorghum or sugar-cane between the vines, which draws the phylloxera from the grapevines. It is said to have been successfully adopted already in Turkey, Croatia, Dalmatia and Eastern Italy.
FALLING RENTS, in England.--While landlords are battling for rents foreign rivalry is destroying rent, and it is still going down. Large estates have a difficulty in getting either tenants or purchasers. The fall in prices and rents extends all over England. On a farm of 2,700 acres, in Lancashire, the tenant had been paying five dollars an acre, but he refused to take it for 1887 at two dollars and a half. Lands in 1876 were commonly valued at $260 per acre; but they would not bring over $150 to-day. The Court Journal says:
The depreciation in the value of English land is witnessed by one or two statements published last week. We are, in the first place, told that within a radius of twelve miles around Louth, in Lincolnshire, there are now 22,400 acres of land without tenants. In the same shire the largest farm in England has been thrown on the owner's hands. It is 2,700 acres in extent and the tenant paid £1 per acre. This year a reduction of 50 per cent was made to him, but finding that although an experienced and energetic farmer, that even at this reduction he could not make two ends meet, he has thrown up his farm.