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ECHOES OF THE MONTH. BY AN OLD PHOTOGRAPHER. New-Year’s Greetings—The Goddard Fund—Carbonate of Silver Paper—Photographic Book Illustration— New Poisons Act—Extensive Piracy Case—Societies. some degree of freshness and beauty, they will not readily fade out of sight. Nevertheless, the reign of carbon will come: it may be many years first, it probably will be; but i is scarcely to be doubted that some good carbon proces s will prevail in the photography of the future. chemicals photographers use was employed. The process can he described in three lines:—Obtain the oil pattern, note the time, lay a piece of glazed surface paper on the pattern for an instant, take it off, place on the surface of a plate of ink for a moment, remove and wash off the excess of ink with water, and your pattern is there as it was on the water. You now have an exquisite representation in black, as fine as any photograph. A scarlet is obtained by employing a solution of cochineal or any of the scarlet coal-tar colours. We have them in orange, red, scarlet, black, blue, and other tints. A good result is got by first passing the paper containing the pattern of oil through ink, and then through cochineal. The principle of the matter is this : the paper absorbs the oil at the several parts to the exclusion of the water. The ink colours the water parts, but, at the same time, tints the oil parts very faintly, which gives it the appear ance of relievo. Any kind of paper almost will do; tissue, green, glazed, white, &c., give pretty good results. The paper I employ, which I find to take up the most delicate parts, is what is known as white surface paper (glazed on ono side only). Wo get it cut in circular pieces of about four inches in diameter. The pattern ob tained is of this diameter. A larger pattern could readily be obtained by using a larger drop of oil and a larger size of paper. Mr. Lundy, of Leith, at the inaugural lecture of a course of lectures delivered there last Thursday, exhibited several books of patterns of different oils I sent him. Professor Woodward, of Birmingham, wrote me for some of these fixed representations, but as I did not receive his letter until the vciy day of the conversazione at Birming- words as they stand from the first heading referring to the fund in your volume for 1863, and not from your last article. It must be a great relief to the committee to have got rid of an onerous and thankless responsibility, which brought much work, worry, and anxiety, and very little satisfaction of any kind. Stay! I believe I am wrong again. There is a satis faction : that of discharging a duty, undertaken with a good aim, honestly and manfully when it ceased to be pleasant, and conscientiously remaining faithful to a trust imposed upon them by the subscribers in the face of obloquy and false imputation. That satisfaction—and it is the highest mortals can hope for—they must possess; and a second satisfaction, also, that of knowing that the subscribers—I believe with out an exception worth naming—have entirely approved their action. Hating finished so satisfactorily, then, I hope fervently that the disagremcns and ingratitude attending that attempt will not be suffered to interfere in any way with the zeal of any one concerned in aiding in the formation of a general relief fund ; and that before the next Christmas bells chime peace and good-will to all mankind, this fund, as one element of that good-will, may be amongst the estab lished facts of the year. Another printing facility to prolong the tenure of the silver processes. Paper prepared with carbonate of silver, I see, is announced in France, but the details are meagre as yet. I remember hearing Mr. Spiller describe an experiment of twelve years ago, in which carbonate of soda was em ployed as sensitizer or an accelerator in printing, and the experiment is suggestive. Paper was treated with nitrate of silver, then floated upon a solution of chloride of. sodium, and finally washed. By this means, paper prepared with chloride of silver without any excess of free nitrate was W ith greetings and good wishes such as well befit the season An Old Photographer commences anew his monthly task on the eve of a new year, and hopes for each and all of the many friends he meets in these pages, but whom in the body he shall never see, the highest prosperity and the most unal loyed happiness during the next twelve months which they can possibly desire for themselves. Or, stay! This is not quite wisely done : let him wish them, rather, all the pros perity and happiness they can make good use of. The echoes of the past year faintly mingle with the echoes of the past month, and tempt An Old Photographer to stray in his reminiscences beyond the somewhat dull month just closing. But in doing this he would, he fears, trench upon the Editor’s annual resume, and must forbear. One of the pleasant echoes which still vibrate are those of the last words on the " Goddard Relief Fund.” I take the ham (owing to the note having been delayed), I was extremely sorry I could not send them in time. There are many applications that this method can be put to. We have been able to take perfect fac similes of fem-leaves by coating them with oil, placing them on the glazed paper, pressing them against the paper, obtaining a perfect likeness of the fem, and showing it in relief by drawing the paper through ink, or cochineal, or other colour. In printing with oiled typos on the paper and colouring afterwards, wo have also been able to get beautiful results. I think that paper-stainers and paper hanging manufacturers might be greatly benefited by paying atten tion to our method. I confidently hope to bo able to transfer the patterns oven to cloth, to stone, &c. OLEOGRAPHY; OR, AUTOGRAPAIC PICTURES OF COHESION FIGURES. Some of our readers arc familiar with what are termed “ cohesion figures.” A few years ago, Professor Tomlinson, one of the most shrewd and observant of modern physicists, called attention to the figures formed on the surface of water when various oils, ethers, &c., are dropped on the water and allowed to float there. He noticed that every oil had its specific figure, and that a simple means of detecting adulterations or mixtures was presented by the form of the “cohesion figure.” The beauty of many of the forms assumed by the spreading oils is exceedingly remarkable, and it has often been matter of regret that they were necessarily so evanescent. A recent number of the Chemical News contains an article by Dr. Carter Moffat, in which, under the title of " Oleography,” he deccribes a method of preserving these images by what may be termed an auto graphic process. An extract from his paper will interest our readers:— Those who have watched these exquisite shapes have often wished to secure them on paper as a kind of photograph,—to have them brought before the eye palpable and fixed, to be seen at once a reality, a permanent image. Many have tried to do so. For long I had attempted to do the same. In many things apparently difficult, yet simple, we are apt to think them insurmountable. It is in their very simplicity, however, that we fail to grasp the solution of the problem. The oil patterns, uninjured, can as readily be transferred from the surface of water, and permanently fixed to be placed in our albums, as we can pour water from one vessel to another. N o matter what colours wo desire, we can obtain them of any hue wo please. They rival the most beautiful photographs. The faintest tracery is brought out with tho most perfect fidelity. Two well-known photo graphers of this city, to whom I showed them this week, declared they were excellent photographs; and yet not a trace of the produced. This, on exposure, was found to darken some what slowly and faintly ; but on moistening it with a solu tion of carbonate of soda the blackening went on much more rapidly and vigorously. Is it possible that the sensitive albuminized papers sold ready for use are prepared upon an analogous principle, the excess of free nitrate after sensitizing, or the final traces after washing, perhaps, being converted into a carbonate ? Since the allusion in the News to the paucity of photo graphic book illustration this Christmas, I have taken some pains to note the announcements. The limited number of such books is certainly curious. With the exception of some good artistic books published by Bell and Daldy, one or two by Bennett, and the completion of Dor's illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls, I cannot hear of photographically-illus trated books being issued. It is, however, alleged in the publishing trade, that there is a general paucity of good Christmas books; so we may hope that it is not from any imperfection in photographic illustration that its adoption has been limited this year. The new Act limiting the sale of poisons to the hands of
