208 THE BOOK OF THE LANTERN. 



fund of interest and amusement could be obtained from 

 an exhibition of life-sized pictures of friends and acquaint- 

 ances well known to the family circle ! There is really 

 no great difficulty in obtaining such pictures when the first 

 principles are understood; and when practice has given 

 experience, negatives from prints can be produced with a 

 rapidity and certainty to which the most experienced land- 

 scape photographer is a stranger. 



Nor must the young folks be forgotten. Although the 

 " man swallowing rats " and the other monstrosities, known 

 in the trade as " comic slips," still have an attraction to the 

 eye of youth, surely we can manage by the means now 

 easily within reach, to place before the youngsters some- 

 thing better worth looking at. The quaintly picturesque 

 little youths and damsels drawn by Kate Greenaway would 

 have additional charm for their living playfellows if shown 

 life-sized on a screen ; and nursery legends, as interpreted 

 by Cal&ecott's clever pencil, would acquire a new interest if 

 shown in the same fashion. Perhaps as amateur photo- 

 graphy increases its number of workers, as it is rapidly 

 doing, artists may find it convenient to draw subjects 

 specially for reproduction as lantern transparencies. 



There is one feature in this particular class of photo- 

 graphic work which I have not yet dwelt upon, and that 

 is, the possibility of producing these transparencies inde- 

 pendently of daylight. So long as the spring, summer, and 

 autumn days are upon us, the possessor of a camera finds 

 much other work to employ his time. His labours are 

 mostly in the open field, adding to his stock of negatives, 

 and he looks forward with regret to the many dark hours 



