14 The Water-Jump. 



treatment. But in even the most indistinct ones 

 the outhne and crude shadows were clearly shown 

 by the negatives, and followed absolutely in treat- 

 ing the solar prints. The plates are thus ob- 

 tained intact from the original instantaneous neg- 

 atives, and faithfully represent the action and 

 spirit of the horse. The jumping pictures were 

 taken against the natural background, the others 

 against a screen or building. In the latter, the 

 entire background has been made white, for 

 greater distinctness. The water-jump was in re- 

 ality a dry ditch of eleven feet wide from bar to 

 bank. But being hidden in the original nega- 

 tives by the heaps of earth thrown up in digging 

 it, and several of the negatives being blurred in 

 the foreground, the water was added in the solar 

 prints. To preserve anatomical accuracy, the 

 finer results of both photography and of the pho- 

 totype process have had to be sacrificed. 



To state that the author has often witnessed 

 the prize leaping at the Agricultural Hall Horse 

 Show in London, as well as watched the contest 

 of many a noted English steeple-chase, will ab- 

 solve him from any suspicion of parading these 

 photographs as examples of excellent perform- 

 ance. They were all taken in cold blood on one 

 occasion, and Patroclus was ridden alone over the 

 obstacles at least a dozen times for each good pic- 

 ture secured. Every horseman knows that this 



