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ON A NEW METHOD OF REPRESENTING BOTANIC 

 STRUCTURE. 



By EDWARD A WUNSCH, F.G.S. 



During a short pause in my favorite study of geology, I 

 have been led to follow up a process connected with the kindred 

 science of botany, the results of which I now beg to lay before 

 you. It is a process, not of strictly scientific research, but 

 partaking more of a mechanical and semi- artistic character. 

 The nature of it will be best explained by the specimens now 

 submitted to you, some on paper, some on glass slides, the latter 

 presently to be exhibited to you by means of the optical lantern, 

 by our Curator, Mr. Orowther. It is simply an improved process 

 of nature printing, by means of which the results of that 

 interesting process as known to us only in ponderous and costly 

 volumes, are to be made available to the botanist in his every- 

 day dealings with his favourite plants. By means of it, the 

 outlines and venations of leaves, and of simple flowers such as 

 heaths, can be produced with almost photographic fidelity, for 

 the plant itself is used as model, while the colour is reproduced 

 in oil, either in the natural colours of the plant, or in heightened 

 and more artistic tints. Pending the possibility of photographing 

 in colours, from which process we seem to be far removed as 

 yet, it is an intermediate process between the scylla of the dust 

 and dry bones of the herbarium, and the charybdis of the 

 funereal rendering by the photographic process, and my specimens 

 will be sufficient to point to the possibility of enabling the 

 botanist, at the end of a successful day's ramble, or even within 

 a day or two thereafter, to obtain by an easy process the enduring 

 image, in their natural colours, and with their fresh outlines 

 preserved, of his favourite specimens. 



