274 Correspondence. [April 



Condor, The, XIV, No. 1, Jan.-Feb., 1912. 



Emu, The. XI, Part 3, Jan., 1912. 



Forest and Stream, LXXVIII, Nos. 1-12, 1912. 



Ibis, The (9) VI, No. 21, Jan., 1912. 



Journal Maine Orn. See, XIII, No. 4, Dec, 1911. 



Messager Ornithologique, No. 1, 1912. 



Oologist, The, XXIX, Nos. 1-3, Jan.-Mar., 1912. 



Ornithologische Monatsschrift, XXXVI, No. 12, December, 1911. 



Philippine Journal of Science, VI, Nos. 4-5, Aug.-Nov., 1911. 



Proceedings Acad. Nat. Sci., Philadelphia, LXIII, Pt. 3, 1911. 



Records of the Australian Museum, IX, No. 2, Oct., 1911. 



Revista Italiana di Ornitologia, I, 1-2, July-Dec, 1911 (Nov., 1911). 



Science, N. S., XXXV, Nos. 888-899, 1912. 



Wilson Bulletin, XXIV, No. 5, Mar., 1912. 



Zoologist, The (4) XVI, No. 181, Jan., 1912. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



The Photography of Birds' Eggs. 



To THE Editor of 'The Auk': — 



Dear Sir: — A number of years ago I published several articles on my 

 methods of photographing the eggs of birds, and at that time the subject 

 was attracting considerable attention. Mr. Henry E. Dresser, then en- 

 gaged upon his Eggs of the Birds of Europe, sent me several of his colored 

 plates of eggs for my criticism with respect to the selection of backgrounds. 

 They were the most beautiful things of the kind I had ever seen, and, in 

 fact, I had one or two of them framed for my study. Besides being far 

 ahead of my own achievements in that line, they were elegantly colored 

 and true to nature. Mr. Dresser never wrote me how he made his photo- 

 graphs of birds' eggs, which latter, as we know, stand among the most diffi- 

 cult of all small, inanimate objects representing biological material that the 

 naturalist seeks to obtain photographs of for illustrative purposes. Some 

 ten or fifteen years ago, when I first undertook to photograph birds' eggs, 

 the success I met with was only partial. In those days I used to stick the 

 blown eggs on to a vertical pane of glass with a piece of soft wax. Care 

 was taken that the glass was free from all blemishes (air-bubbles, etc.), 

 and the eggs could be arranged as desired and as they were to appear in 

 the photograph for reproduction and publication. A background of any 

 selected kind was firmly fixed at a proper distance behind the glass and in a 

 plane parallel to it. In setting up the camera to make the exposures, it 

 was done so that the visual axis or line passing through the lens was per- 

 pendicular to these planes, and at a middle point of the egg or eggs to be 

 photographed. 



