CHAPTER VIII. 



DECORATIVE NATURAL HISTORY WORK. 



I N the preceding chap- 

 ters we have been con- 

 sidering a scientific rather 



^m*^ C^TT"^/ than an artistic side of 



photography. The photo- 

 grapher-naturalist is con- 

 tinually employed in securing 



Male Palmated Newt. 



mere transcripts of the 



objects of natural history, and it is fashionable to assert 

 that nature per se is rarely pictorial. It is useless for 

 the naturalist to attempt to remedy this unfortunate 

 state of affairs on the lines adopted at photographic 

 exhibitions. He will find that it is only on rare 

 occasions that he will have more than one main object 

 of interest in his picture, that his subjects will be too 

 small to benefit by the introduction of a sky, and that 

 the suppression of detail by a general blurring of the 

 whole will be outside his province. 



So diverse, however, are the manifestations of 

 nature, in the matter of small forms of life, that the 

 naturalist, far removed though he be from the pictorial, 

 may sometimes approach the decorative unawares. 



To appreciate how decorative mere transcripts of 



