In the March 17 issue of _La Nature_, Marey expressed pleasure that Muybridge was undertaking study of birds in flight. In the same issue there appeared an interesting letter from Eugene Vassel, Captain of Armament at the Suez Canal, dated January 20, 1879, commenting on Marey’s idea of a photographic gun and telling of an idea for a similar automatic camera. This illustrates that at the time, even at the ends of the earth, farthest removed from principal educational and scientific centers, the problem of photographing objects in natural movement was under study. It was then a long way, indeed, from Paris to San Francisco to Suez. By 1880 Plateau magic disks equipped with Muybridge photographs were on sale in England and at about the same time in France. In the December 31, 1881, issue of _La Nature_ several of these were illustrated and the possibilities of their use for instruction and entertainment were discussed. It was evident that they were common as toys in Paris. Subjects included the original one of a horse in motion and even a comedy item of a mule kicking a ball. Muybridge, in the Summer of 1881, went to Paris and there came directly under the influence of Marey who was always most generous in expressing his appreciation of valued work. In this Marey’s nature reminds one of Plateau, the Belgian. Evidently Muybridge had not dreamed of the importance of his pictures for physiological study and other such purposes until it was explained to him. It was the pressing quest of Marey for greater perfection in duplicating nature that gave a great stimulus to the development of the motion picture art-science. Perhaps he, too, would have been surprised had he known that the motion picture, while a great instrument of science, would for many years at least find its chief use as an entertainment medium. To the last, Marey always thought of it for science and, while he did not disdain amusement uses, his interest was exclusively in broadening the field of knowledge. In Paris Muybridge met many notables, including Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891), French painter who specialized in great detail and exact duplication of nature. Meissonier appreciated the value of the Muybridge photos, as he did Marey’s work in analyzing motion in animals and men, as an aid to painting. From that time on Meissonier always kept a Plateau disk and projection device in his studio so that photographs of objects which were to be painted could be studied first by himself and his colleagues. Muybridge evidently took a liking to Meissonier and his work because he singled him out in later years as a painter (one of the few) who was exact in his representation of animals in movement even before the evidence of instantaneous photographs was available.