It so happened, however, that this proviso was not a hardship, for Mr. Dixon told me himself that he had found Edwards' plates the most suitable for their process. The hardship lay in not being able to apply their own discovery or preparation to any dry plates for sale for the public use and benefit. This prohibition was the more to be regretted because no other commercial isochromatic or orthochromatic plates had or have appeared to possess the same qualities of translation. The suppression of the Dixon and Gray preparation of plates is the more surprising when I find eosine is mentioned in the Clayton and Tailfer claim, whereas Mr. Dixon assured me that eosine was not employed by them. Mr. Edwards only acquired his monopoly and right to interfere with the commercial application of an independent discovery on Nov. 18th, 1886, and there is little to be gained in England by the publication of the experiments of such men as Vogel, Eder, Ives, and Abney, if one man can prevent all others making use of them. This year death removed from our midst one, and perhaps the greatest, of the martyrs of photography--Sylvester Laroche. This was the man that fought the battle for freedom from the shackles of monopoly. He won the fight, but lost his money, and the photographers of the day failed to make him a suitable recompense. There was one honourable exception, and Mr. Sylvester told me himself that Mr. J. E. Mayall gave him £100 towards his legal expenses. Laroche's surname was Sylvester, but as there was a whole family of that name photographers, he added Laroche to distinguish himself from his brothers. Sylvester Laroche was an artist, and worked very cleverly in pastel, but somehow or other he never appeared to prosper. Nothing particular marked the photographic record of 1887, but death was busy in removing men who had made their mark both in the early and later days of photography. First, on March 19th, Robert Hunt, the most copious writer on photography in its earlier period. As early as 1844 he published the first edition of his "Researches on Light," in which he was considerably assisted by Sir John Herschel, and it is astonishing to find what a mine of photographic information that early work contains. The next was Colonel Russell, better known, photographically, as Major Russell. He was born in 1820, and died on May 16th, 1887. He was best known for his tannin process and alkaline developer, with a bromide solution as a restrainer. For a long time his tannin process was very popular among collodion dry plate workers, and very beautiful pictures were taken on Russell's Tannin Plates, but it is many years since they were ruthlessly brushed aside, like all other collodion dry plates, by the now universally employed gelatino-bromide plates or films.