recent Improvements in Photography. 1 67 



it. But these pictures possess the beautiful and extraordinary pro- 

 perty of being susceptible of revival. In order to revive them and 

 restore their original appearance, it is only necessary to wash them 

 again by candlelight with gallo-nitrate of silver, and warm them : 

 this causes all the shades of the picture to darken greatly, while 

 the white parts remain unaffected. The shaded parts of the paper 

 thus acquire an opacity which gives a renewed spirit and life to the 

 copies, of which a second series may now be taken, extending often 

 to a very considerable number. In reviving the picture it some- 

 times happens that various details make their appearance which 

 had not before been seen, having been latent all the time, yet ne- 

 vertheless not destroyed by their long exposure to sunshine. 



The author terminates these observations by stating a few expe- 

 riments calculated to render the mode of action of the sensitive 

 paper more familiar. 



1. Wash a piece of the iodized paper with the gallo-nitrate ; ex- 

 pose it to daylight for a second or two, and then withdraw it. The 

 paper will soon begin to darken spontaneously, and will grow quite 

 black. 



2. The same as before, but let the paper be warmed. The 

 blackening will be more rapid in consequence of the warmth. 



3. Put a large drop of the gallo-nitrate on one part of the paper 

 and moisten another part of it more sparingly, then leave it ex- 

 posed to a very faint daylight; it will be found that the lesser 

 quantity produces the greater effect in darkening the paper ; and 

 in general, it will be seen that the most rapid darkening takes 

 place at the moment when the paper becomes nearly dry ; also, if 

 only a portion of the paper is moistened, it will be observed that 

 the edges or boundaries of the moistened part are more acted on by 

 light than any other part of the surface. 



4. If the paper, after being moistened with the gallo-nitrate, is 

 washed with water and dried, a slight exposure to daylight no 

 longer suffices to produce so much discoloration ; indeed it often 

 produces none at all. But by subsequently washing it again with 

 the gallo-nitrate and warming it, the same degree of discoloration 

 is developed as in the other case (experiments 1 and 2). The dry 

 paper appears, therefore, to be equal, or superior in sensitiveness 

 to the moist ; only with this difference, that it receives a virtual 

 instead of an actual impression from the light, which it requires a 

 subsequent process to develope. 



5. " New mode of preparation of the Daguerreotype plates, by 

 which portraits can be taken in the short space of time of from five 

 to fifteen seconds, according to the power of light, discovered by A. 

 Claudet in the beginning of May 1841." Communicated by the 

 Marquis of Northampton, Pres. R.S. 



" My improvement," says the author, " consists in using for the 

 preparation of the plates, a combination of chlorine with iodine, in 

 the state of chloride of iodine. I follow the preparation recommended 

 by Daguerre. After having put the plate in the iodine box for a 

 short time, and before it has acquired any appearance of yellow co- 



