Picture fakers have been dethroned by application of the X-ray to paintings. Recently painted “old masters” are now easily detected. Modern artists use white-lead, which is more opaque than the “priming” or “sizing” used by the older artists; and the X-ray device “made in Germany” in 1914 by Dr. Faber, and further developed by the French expert, Dr. André Chéron, at once distinguishes the old from the new. One picture by Van Ostade, of men drinking at a table, proved to be a fraud when submitted to the X-ray; it had been painted over a study of dead birds. Another, called “The Royal Child,” a supposed 16th century work, now in the Louvre, was proved to have been painted during the 19th century over a picture of very much earlier date. During a popular lecture on the X-ray in London, before the Royal Institution, the distinguished physicist, Prof. G. W. C. Kaye, showed a number of radiograph slides, among which were two pictures by Dutch painters, one representing the Madonna and the other the Crucifixion. In the former, the Madonna appeared to be looking at something which was non-existent in the canvas, and a radiograph proved the missing object was a child which some former owner of the picture had painted out. In the second picture, a woman in the attitude of prayer was found to have been painted over what was in the original the figure of a man in monk’s garb. The first X-ray pictures ever taken of a mummy were completed by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. The pictures showing the skeleton in detail are expected to be a great aid in studying the development of bone formations in the evolution of man. This first subject of the scientists’ X-ray was a South American Indian mummy. Fake mummies, like false gems, are instantly detected by X-ray methods. One of the methods used for detecting the theft of diamonds at the mines is to examine the workmen with X-rays. Of course, a fluoroscope is used to make the X-ray image visible, and this is the type used in any regular X-ray work. The X-rays are now being used in shoe-stores—“foot-o-scope” instruments—to enable shoe salesmen to see the bones of a customer’s foot and thus make correct fittings of shoes. A few years ago there arrived from Germany a new kind of mechanical doll. “A secret mechanism inside enabled it to walk, sit down or stand up, and to do other unusual things. The importer in possession of the sample doll would not allow it to be opened. But one of the competitors borrowed the doll. He had promised not to open it. But he made some X-ray photographs of it. Now he is manufacturing these dolls himself.”