Birmingham has held aloof from the London Convention. This to be regretted; for some of the Council; at any rate, entertain a sense of the trouble and expense the Birmingham brethren put themselves to in order to make it the success it undoubtedly was last year. Into the financial troubles to which this coolness is mainly attributable we do not here care to enter; but we desire to record our convict that they then did what, in their estimation; was best for the furtherance of the interests of the Convention.
When London was announced as the locale of the Convention it was enthusiastically believed that the Queen would certainly open the evnt. Failing this, some other member of the Royal Family would be only too pleased to do so. But when it came to the scratch, Royalty was inaccessible. The Lord Mayor was appealed to, but he declined and of all the phalanx of great men, embracing dukes, archbishops, presidents of learned and other societies, and men of scientific and artistic renown who were paraded as "Patrons," not one could got! These all held aloof, even to the extent of gracing a single meeting with their presence. The moral of this is: let future Conventions stand on their own dignity, and not play the part of toast eaters or sycophants to those who happen to have great names, and who estimate at its proper worth such servility and obsequiousness. Photography is quite able to stand its own ground upon its own merits. Derby, Glasgow, and Birmingham did the thing right royally without fawning ; why should London have been so abjectly parasitical ?
The attitude of the fading London professional photographers towards the Convention is difficult to understand. Making full allowance for the merely trade, in contradistinction to the technical, interest so many of them are credited with taking in their profession, one might have expected that from motives of policy alone they would have taken at least a seeming interest in it. But in these dull times the five-shilling fee for membership may be a consideration, especially when one could have access to any specially desirable meeting on payment of one shilling. More anomalous still is the attitude of some who allowed their names to be placed upon the Local Committee, yet who never attended a single meeting, or, even, if we are correctly informed, became members of the Convention at all.
The begging of papers from friends to be read at the Convention is largely a farce, seeing that the majority of such papers cannot by any possibility be read, but must be " taken as read." Much better confine this department to at most two good lectures, and devote the remainder of the week of meeting to that for which it is much better adapted, viz., pleasant outings and recreation. It is a small compliment to those who prepare long and, doubtless, interesting papers to relegate them to the limbo of what is so well termed a ‘massacre of the innocents.’ Who that has been subjected to this fate will risk its repetition ?
THE CONVENTION VISIT TO KEW OBSERVATORY.
YESTERDAY the Convention visit to Kew Gardens did not come off, as strangely enough in relation to so beautiful a place, few wished to go there, so in the morning those few joined Mr. F. P. Cembrano's party, and visited places of interest in Richmond. Yesterday afternoon Mr. Cembrano's party joined that of Mr. R. L. Kidd, who conducted the visitors to Kew Observatory, where Mr. G. M. Whipple, the superintendent, was in waiting to receive them, having come up from Deal for the purpose. The visitors included Messrs. R. L. Kidd, F. P. Cembrano, J. Traill Taylor, W. Cobb, Mr. J. B. B. Wellington, Mr. Friese Greene, and others. In the Observatory the party was divided into two sections, not to overcrowd the instrument rooms ; one section was conducted over the building in one direction by Mr. Whipple, whilst the other section was taken round in the opposite direction by Mr. Baker.