444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cutting, and to it it is superior in the matter of accuracy. Time, 

 labor, and expense are also largely saved by the scientific use of the 

 camera. For example, in order to produce a figure of the skeleton 

 of some such medium-sized mammal as a cat for an octavo work upon 

 osteology, the reduction and draughting often occupied an artist 

 several days; the cost, in addition to his time and labor expended, 

 ranging all the way from ten to twenty -five dollars; whereas now, 

 by the use of the camera, not only are greater accuracy and beauty 

 insured, but the resulting half-tone obtained is at a very moderate 

 pecuniary outlay. In the matter of illustrating sections of bones 

 there is absolutely no comparison at all, for it is quite out of the ques- 

 tion for any artist to copy the delicate internal cancellous tissue of 

 the bone, while a photographic picture, occupying less than an 

 hour to secure, will exhibit all this detail with the greatest sharp- 

 ness and fidelity. Passing to another field in practical zoological 

 pictography, we find the works upon natural history published 

 during the latter part of the last decade, in many instances, 

 filled with figures of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish, to say 

 nothing of those of the invertebrata and plants, where not only 

 the specimens are malproportioned, drawn in impossible attitudes, 

 characterless, but are even in some cases totally irrecognizable. 

 Then these figures too, or the wretched class of them to which 

 reference is made, had come to be a species of authors' heirlooms, 

 passing from one work on to the pages of the next published one, 

 and so on, till they found their way even into lexicons and 

 text-books intended for the instruction of students in schools and 

 colleges. All this is especially objectionable, for it is fraught with 

 the danger of teaching erroneous ideas in the very important matter 

 of the appreciation of correct form or morphological accuracy in 

 natural objects, giving our youth false notions of the appearances of 

 animals of all kinds and descriptions. 



Let any one examine, for example, the figures in . literature of 

 such mammals as the walrus or the seals, published not longer aga 

 than forty years, and my meaning will at once be made clear. 

 Indeed, it is only in very recent time, comparatively, that we begin 

 to see anything like correct pictures of the fur seal, and the camera 

 has plaA^ed a very important part in securing these. Among birds, 

 and particularly among reptiles and fish, the same objectionable fea- 

 tures are frequently noticeable, and of the charge of all this the 

 present writer considers himself by no means guiltless, for before the 

 photographic camera came to his aid not a few of his own published 

 figures of vertebrates would without question have passed into the 

 same category. Since the camera has come to his aid, however, these 

 have been supplanted by a class of photographic pictures of living 



