INTRODUCTION. XXi 



associations, and for objects too numerous to particularize. 

 With slides improved in quality and cheapened in price, 

 this unique form of Magic Lantern is inaugurating a new 

 era in this species of representation, for it can be easily 

 used and with good effect, where troublesome and compli- 

 cated arrangements would be altogether out of the question. 



The Slide Question Plain or Colored? 



The better class of colored slides will doubtless, to a 

 large extent, continue to be a necessity, notwithstanding 

 plain photographs on glass, which are now made so fine, so 

 abundant, and so cheap, constitute our main reliance. The 

 work of the skillful painter is too costly to be largely 

 afforded, while glass photographs are printed and mounted 

 by less and cheaper labor. The best colored slides are first 

 photographed from large fine engravings, which give to 

 the subsequent high coloring which these pictures admit of 

 fine and distinct outlines ; the best uncolored slides are 

 mostly taken from sober nature, with such detail of shad- 

 ing as scarcely to admit of improvement from the painter's 

 brush. 



The colored slides in this catalogue are mounted in 

 balsam, between plate glass, in wooden frames, with circular 

 opening three and a half inches in diameter (see " New 

 Departure," Manual, page 146). The price ($2.50, the 

 market price of the old-fashioned kind) continues to stand 

 as in old editions, while the quality is far better, and the 

 cost of production is considerably greater. Some subjects 

 can be better mounted in frames with square openiug ; this 

 style is priced the same, and is called, ^>ar excellence, the 

 Art slide. It must be confessed, that there are compara- 

 tively few additional subjects corresponding in excellence 

 with the colored slides enumerated in Classes I and II of 



