learn the different positions of the legs of
animals while in rapid motion.

A Frenchman also--M. Mach--photographed a plant of rapid growth twice a
day from exactly the same position for fifty consecutive days. When the
pictures were thrown on the screen in rapid order the plant seemed to
grow visibly.

The moving pictures provide a most attractive entertainment, and it was
this feature of the idea, undoubtedly, that furnished the incentive to
inventors. The public is always willing to pay well for a good
amusement.

The makers of the moving-picture films have photographic studios
suitably lighted and fitted with all the necessary stage accessories
(scenery, properties, etc.) where the little comedies shown on the
screens of the theatres are acted for the benefit of the rapid-fire
camera and its operators, who are often the only spectators. One of
these studios in the heart of the city of New York is so brilliantly
lighted by electricity that pictures may be taken at full speed, thirty
to forty-five per second, at any time of day or night. Another company
has an open-air gallery large enough for whole troops of cavalry to
maneuver before the camera, or where the various evolutions of a working
fire department may be photographed.

Of course, when the pictures are taken in a studio or place prepared for
the work the photographic part is easy--the camera man sets up his
machine and turns the crank while the performers do the rest. But some
extra-ordinary pictures have been taken when the photographer had to
seek his scene and work his machine under trying and even dangerous
circumstances.

During the Boer War in South Africa two operators for the Biograph
Company took their bulky machine (it weighed about eighteen hundred
pounds) to the very firing-line and took pictures of battles between the
British and the Burghers when they were exposed to the fire of both
armies. On one occasion, in fact, the operator who was turning the
mechanism--he sat on a bicycle frame, the sprocket of which was
connected by a chain with the interior machinery--during a battle, was
knocked from his place by the concussion of a shell that exploded
nearby; nevertheless, the film was saved, and the same man rode on
horseback nearly seventy-five miles across country to the nearest
railroad point so that the precious photographic record might be sent to
London and shown to waiting audiences there.

Pictures were taken by the kinetoscope show