to those which the naked eye can follow. The technical progress led to
the attachment of the microscope. After overcoming tremendous
difficulties, the scientists succeeded in developing a microscope
kinematography which multiplies the dimensions a hundred thousand times.
We may see on the screen the fight of the bacteria with the
microscopically small blood corpuscles in the blood stream of a diseased
animal. Yes, by the miracles of the camera we may trace the life of
nature even in forms which no human observation really finds in the
outer world. Out there it may take weeks for the orchid to bud and
blossom and fade; in the picture the process passes before us in a few
seconds. We see how the caterpillar spins its cocoon and how it breaks
it and how the butterfly unfolds its wings; and all which needed days
and months goes on in a fraction of a minute. New interest for geography
and botany and zoölogy has thus been aroused by these developments,
undreamed of in the early days of the kinematograph, and the scientists
themselves have through this new means of technique gained unexpected
help for their labors.

The last achievement in this universe of photoknowledge is "the magazine
on the screen." It is a bold step which yet seemed necessary in our day
of rapid kinematoscopic progress. The popular printed magazines in
America had their heydey in the muckraking period about ten years ago.
Their hold on the imagination of the public which wants to be informed
and entertained at the same time has steadily decreased, while the power
of the moving picture houses has increased. The picture house ought
therefore to take up the task of the magazines which it has partly
displaced. The magazines give only a small place to the news of the day,
a larger place to articles in which scholars and men of public life
discuss significant problems. Much American history in the last two
decades was deeply influenced by the columns of the illustrated