PBEEACE
About the year 1851 there was placed at my disposal a
Lantern, of a character very unusual (at that time) for
any boy of my age to possess a share in ; in fact it was
one of Carpenter and Westley’s ‘ Phantasmagoria ’
lanterns, unrivalled at that period of transparent sheets
and sperm-oil. The result was that Optical Projection, in
its various forms, has been with me more or less a hobby
ever since ; less followed for some years during which
pursuits of a more open-air character,1 for sufficiently
serious reasons, engaged more of my attention, but
never abandoned, and again and again returned to with
renewed interest. Mere slides of course came first, but
I soon discovered for myself that things could be pro¬
jected as well as pictures ; and for a long time past I
have found much relaxation from my literary work, in
reducing various optical and other physical experiments
to conditions which enable an audience to behold them
upon a screen, and in devising contrivances for making
the beautiful phenomena of Polarised Light more spec¬
tacularly imposing. Since the publication of a little
1 Poultry-breeding.