The following progress of “Picture Plays” has been kindly furnished by Mr. Alexander Black: 1--First “plays,” in three acts, written, photographed, and presented by Alexander Black--1894. 2--Episodic motion-pictures placed in series. 3--Short five-minute comedies in motion pictures. 4--Scenes of travel in motion-pictures. 5--Scenes from novels in motion-pictures (“Vanity Fair,” for example, presented in consecutive series--1911). 6--Scenes from “Odyssey” in consecutive series--1911-12. 7--Sarah Bernhardt in “Queen Elizabeth”--1912. PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS With other improvements have come the admirable pictures in natural colors, all mechanically produced. For some time we have had hand-colored films, but these have required extraordinary patience on the part of the colorist, who had to treat each of the sixteen thousand pictures one at a time. Excessive care was also necessary as an overlap of a thirty-second part of an inch would show the color many inches out of place when the picture was shown enlarged on the screen. The work is so tedious that the capacity of the colorist is said to be limited to about thirty-five feet of film per day; the cost is thus made excessive. And the market needs, which frequently require two hundred reproductions of a reel, render the hand-colored film commercially impracticable. The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the “kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven, revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which are colored, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are reproduced, being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next. The photographs are all in pairs, and twice the number of pictures are taken and reproduced as in the ordinary machine, and the speed is also twice as great, the kinemacolor taking and reproducing thirty-two--and sometimes as many as fifty-five--per second, and the ordinary machine sixteen. Incidentally, to care for the greater speed the kinemacolor machine is also driven by a motor instead of by the ordinary hand-crank.