An invention which simplifies photography out of doors may be said to have claims on the attention of tourists and travellers, as well as of professional photographers. To carry the bottles, liquids, and other appliances at present required necessitates troublesome baggage; but Mr Chardon of Paris shews that all this may be avoided by the use of his ‘Dry bromide of silver emulsion.’ This preparation, a mixture of collodion and the bromide, will keep an indefinite time in bottles excluded from the light, and does not suffer from varying temperatures. Specimens carried to China, and back by way of the Red Sea, underwent no alteration; an important consideration for travellers and astronomers who wish to take photographs in tropical countries. When required for use the bromide is mixed in certain proportions with ether and alcohol; the plates are coated with this solution, and as soon as dry are ready for the photographer. They require no further preparation, and retain their sensibility through many months. The image may be developed immediately or after some weeks, according to circumstances; in proof of which photographs taken at Aden have been developed in Paris. But a very small quantity of water is necessary, and the image may be transferred to a film of gelatine or a sheet of paper at pleasure, which lessens the risk of breakage, and the plates may be used for fresh pictures. An account has been published of the disturbance and destruction which the telegraph lines in Germany underwent during the widespread storm one night in March 1876. The destruction was so very great, that had the storm occurred during a political crisis or a war, the consequences might have been much more calamitous. This liability to derangement has in nearly all countries led practical minds to conclude that underground telegraphs are preferable to lines carried on posts through the air; and the German government have laid underground wires from Berlin to Mainz (Mayence), a distance of about three hundred and eighty miles, which will afford excellent means for comparing the two systems.