THE MUSEUM. 



59 



my pictures, and there have been a 

 great many of them, have been pub- 

 lished as illustrations to my scientific 

 papers, and elsewhere. 



When one comes to examine the fig- 

 ures of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, 

 and other forms that illustrate many 

 of our older works on zoology, he can 

 be but struck with the fact how wide 

 of the mark the majority of them are. 

 Indeed, it is frequently difficult to rec- 

 ognize the form of the animal that the 

 artist intended to depict from the draw- 

 ing he has made of it. 



It was along such lines, as well as 

 others nearly related thereto, that I 

 hoped to introduce an improvement 

 into my own designs. So simple are 

 these steps that I feel sure that any 

 painstaking young photographer can 

 acquire and practice them, — and that, 

 too, to profitable ends; to his personal 

 enjoyment in the pursuit; or to the 

 great assistance of others; or even to 

 the advancement of learning; possibly 

 to all of these combined. 



A year or so ago I was collecting 

 zoological and ethnological material in 

 Northwestern New Mexico and among 

 many other things captured a great 

 number of tiger salamanders {Ambly- 

 stoma tigrinuni), which were sent to 

 biological laboratories all over the 

 world. Now a salamander is a difficult 

 subject to get a good figure of, and 

 there are comparatively but few such 

 throughout the entire range of zoolog- 

 ical literature. This was my way of 

 obtaining one with the camera: I fixed 

 a small pine shelf perpendicular to the 

 wall of my study at a convenient dis- 

 tance above the floor. This I covered 

 with a large sheet of clean, white blot- 

 ting paper, bending it so it hung down 

 over the shelf in front, and likewise ex- 

 tended up over the wall behind It 

 was held in place by pinning it to the 

 shelf with artists' thumb-tacks. Next 

 placing any long, small object on the 

 middle of the shelf in the place to be 

 afterwards occupied by the salamander, 

 we focus upon it with the camera, a 



strong light coming directly from be- 

 hind the instrument. Insert your dia- 

 phragm with the smallest aperture, and 

 remove the "dummy" from off the 

 shelf. Now we are ready for the sub- 

 ject, and as it is very difficult to get 

 one of these animals to lie still an in- 

 stant, I waved over his nostrils, for a 

 second or two, the fumes of a little sul- 

 phuric ether, and placed him in position 

 on the shelf. As he recovered from 

 the anaesthetic, he assumed a very nat- 

 ural attitude, and was perfectly quiet, 

 allowing me to make an exposure of 

 two minutes, and the result was I ob- 

 tained a good working negative. The 

 object of the blotting paper is to give 

 a sharp figure, berefit of all surround- 

 ings, and that is one kind of picture 

 largely demanded in zoological illustra- 

 tions. Of course we can have all the 

 grass, stones, and the rest of it that 

 we want, but as I say, that is not the 

 kind of figure desired. The blot- 

 ting paper usually gives a pecu- 

 liarly soft back-ground, and dead white 

 in the reproduction made from the neg- 

 aative. 



In nearly all cases such a negative 

 should be intensified by the usual 

 method with bichloride of mercury and 

 the ammonia bath. It sharpens all the 

 details of the figures, and makes a 

 better print for the object in view. 

 Now from such a negative a good pho- 

 tograph can be made upon sensitized 

 albumen paper, and from this a draw- 

 ing can be made. Or any of the photo- 

 engravers, by the various methods now 

 employed, can make an electrotype 

 from this negative, from which any 

 number of figures can be printed. 

 Yet again, you can make a print from 

 it upon plain, non-albumenized, sensi- 

 tized paper, which figure can be after- 

 wards colored by hand from the origi- 

 nal, and then handed to a lithographer 

 for reproduction. Finally, one of the 

 prints on this plain paper, can be deli- 

 cately traced over by means of one of 

 Gillott's mapping pens (No. 291) and 

 Higgins' American drawing ink, and, 



