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PREFACE. The remarks which stand in the position of " Preface ” to a volume consisting of the aggregated numbers of a weekly journal, forming a year’s issue, are necessarily the last words written in that volume, and afford the Editor opportunity, if need be, for observations, explanatory or qualifying, in regard to the work of the year. In the Volume just concluded we have, fortunately, nothing to qualify or explain. Our record of a year’s progress in the now comprehensive field of photography, and the aids we have furnished to that progress—by the pens of our contributors and correspondents, and by our own—are before the reader, and furnish their own best explanation. It would be now somewhat late in the day to enlarge on the aids to photographic progress furnished by photographic journalism. The unprecedented rapidity of the progress of the art, the universality of its practice throughout the world, its singular fecundity of application, and the rare perfection to which—in many respects, at least—it has attained in little more than a quarter of a century, are due, it cannot be doubted, in a great measure to the fact that greater facilities and inducements for the communication and interchange of ideas and for the diffusion of information, by means of a special press, have existed in connection with this art, than have, perhaps, ever existed in connection with any other art or science. In writing the final words of the Twelfth Volume of the first weekly journal devoted to photography, these reflections naturally occur. During the period of time which has elapsed since the Photographic News was established, photographic journalism has become more extended and active : many other journals devoted to the art have sprung into existence, and, after flourishing a short time, have passed away and been forgotten ; whilst this journal—the Editor makes the assertion with much gratitude as well as modest pride—has steadily progressed in influence and recognition, and in the success consequent upon the possession of these. Notwith standing the various phases through which photography has passed as a commercial enterprise, and the different aspects it has assumed as a science and an art, the PIOTOGRAPHIC News has steadily acquired and accumulated friends, influence, and