216 TAKING OF PORTRAITS BY PHOTOGRAPHY. [MEMOIR XV. 



not to have been regarded as a possible application of 

 Daguerre's invention, and no notice is taken of it in the 

 reports made to the legislative bodies of France. We 

 have been told that Daguerre had not at that period 

 taken any portraits; and when we consider the period 

 of time twenty or twenty-five minutes which was 

 then deemed necessary to get a daguerreotype landscape, 

 we do not wonder at the observation of a French author, 

 who describes the taking of portraits as ' Toujours un 

 terrain un pen fabuleux pour le Daguerreotype? " 



Very soon after M. Daguerre's remarkable process for 

 photogenic drawing was known in America, I made at- 

 tempts to accomplish its application to the taking of 

 portraits from the life. M. Arago had already stated in 

 his address to the Chamber of Deputies that M. Da- 

 guerre expected by a slight advance to meet with suc- 

 cess, but as yet no account had reached us of that object 

 being attained. 



In the first experiments I made for obtaining portraits 

 from the life, the face of the sitter was dusted with a 

 white powder, under an idea that otherwise no impres- 

 sion could be obtained. A very few trials showed the 

 error of this ; for even when the sun was only dimly 

 shining there was no difficulty in delineating the feat- 

 ures. 



When the sun, the sitter, and the camera are situated 

 in the same vertical plane, if a double convex non-achro- 

 matic lens, four inches in diameter and fourteen in focus, 

 be employed, perfect miniatures can be obtained in the 

 open air, in a period varying with the character of the 

 light, from twenty to ninety seconds. The dress is admi- 

 rably given, even if it should be black ; the slight differ- 

 ences of illumination are sufficient to characterize it, as 

 well as to show each button, button-hole, and every fold. 





