XII NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



officers and fifteen men. In attempting to reach the Great Fish River, 

 the whole party probably pi'rished, as the natives said, 'dropping 

 down by the way, one by one.' In their further journeys, Lieut. 

 Hobson and Capt. McClintock fell in "with a boat, which the sufferers 

 had abandoned, -with its bow turned toward the ship, and in it were 

 two human skeletons, one in each end. Two guns stood against her 

 side, loaded, and a barrel cocked in each. There was fuel in abun- 

 dance about her, but no food, and no remains of any, except some tea 

 and chocolate. They found in her, also, several watches, and some sil- 

 ver spoons and forks, and plenty of ammunition. But guns and powder 

 were as useless as fuel and forks, where there was nothing to kill. 

 And here their sad story ends. That wilderness is marked, perhaps, 

 for many a mile with other bleaching bones, and tattered relics, as the 

 wanderers fell, one after the other, in their horrible and hopeless 

 march ; but no pious hand will ever gather them together, and give 

 them Christian burial no friendly and pitying eyes ever drop a tear 

 upon them." 



Some years since, the Duke of Luynes, a distinguished French 

 photographic amateur, instituted a prize, under the auspices of the 

 French Academy, for the discovery of a method of producing photo- 

 graphs by the use of carbon alone (neglecting salts of gold, silver, 

 and other metals), this b-ing the only material which, submitted to 

 the test of time, has transmitted to us, without change, records almost 

 3000 years old. The Commission of the Photographic Society, Paris, 

 to whom the applications for the prize were referred, have recently 

 reported that they are unable to announce a full success, and, there- 

 fore, adjourn the decision for three years. The desideratum is to 

 obtain a coating of carbon in a manner analogous to that from silver 

 or gold namely, by reduction. But chemistry, as yet, has failed to 

 discover a process for the reduction of carbon compounds, and photo- 

 graphers have resorted to animal-black, which they have applied, in 

 any convenient manner, to plates previously exposed to the sun. 

 From the many contestants of the prize, the Commission esteemed 

 two memoirs presented as worthy of reward ; and the following 

 resume of these is given by M. Nickles, in his correspondence with 

 Sillimans Journal : 



Messrs. Gamier and Salmon, the authors of one of these memoirs, 

 cover the face of paper with a film obtained from an intimate mixture 

 of bichromate of ammonia and albumen. This coating is dried by 

 heat, and exposed to the sun in a frame covered by a glass positive. 

 The picture appears in a yellow-brown tint, which becomes more 

 intense by a gentle warmth. The sheet thus prepared is fixed on a 

 planchette, and covered with finely powdered ivory-black, the coating 

 being made even by a stump of cotton. It is next detached and 

 plunged in common water, the image uppermost, and there gently 

 moved at intervals for a quarter of an hour. The water is then 



