1855.] on Nature-Printing. 107 



This secures, on the one hand, a perfect representation of the 

 characteristic outline of the plant, as well as that of some of the 

 other external marks by which a plant is known, and even in 

 some measure its structure, as for instance in the venation of 

 ferns, and the leaves of flowering plants ; and on the other, affords 

 the means of multiplying copies in a quick and easy manner, at a 

 trifling expense compared to the result obtained — and to an 

 unlimited extent. 



The great defect of all pictorial representations of botanical 

 figures has consisted in the inability of art to represent faithfully 

 those minute peculiarities by which natural objects are often best 

 distinguished. Nature-Printing has therefore come to the aid of 

 this branch of science in particular, whilst its future development 

 promises facilities for copying other objects of nature, the reproduc- 

 tion of which is not within the province of the human hand to 

 execute ; and even were it possible, it would involve an amount of 

 labour scarcely adequate to the results obtained. 



Although considered for some years past in various parts of 

 Europe as a new art, the idea is by no means so recent as is supposed : 

 much less is there ground for the Austrians to assert their exclusive 

 right to the priority of the invention, merely on account of the first 

 application of the process in its fullest extent in the Imperial Print- 

 ing-Office at Vienna. 



Councillor Auer * has not only done this, but he has claimed for 

 Nature-Printing a position to which it has no right : he has com- 

 pared it to the invention of writing and the art of printing ; more- 

 over, he has placed it on an equality with the Galvanoplastics of 

 Jacobi and Spencer, and the Daguerreotype of Daguerre. Valuable 

 as are the results of Nature-Printing, it still has its defects ; it has 

 its limits, and its applications are limited, and care will be required 

 to confine it within the bounds of its capabilities. 



That an establishment, so renowned for its productions as that at 

 Vienna, unlimited in its command of the resources of science and 

 mechanism, should have been the first to bring any invention con- 

 nected with printing to a practical state of perfection, is not matter 

 to create surprise ; but that it should, in the most unqualified 

 manner, in the name and on the authority of its chief director, claim 

 all the honour of the discovery, is a point that is open to question, 

 and in point of fact is questioned by several private individuals, 

 who, for want of those unlimited resources and opportunities which 

 only government establishments are able to command, were unable 

 to crown their experiments with practical results. 



Nature-Printing is nothing more than an application of facts 

 worked out by various persons, in different countries, under very 

 different circumstances, and at very different periods ; and by tracing 



♦ Vide Denkschriftcn der Kais. Akademie, Wien ; Math .-Nat. Classe. 

 Band V., p. 107 (illustrated by many plates). 



