216 TAKING OF PORTRAITS BY PHOTOGRAPHY. [MEMOIR XV. 



not to have been regarded as a possible application of 

 Daguerre's invention, and no not;ce 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. 



