ee en Tee a eee 



1891.) Where Amateur Photographers Can Assist Science. 629 
typed by any of the-ordinary methods, at a very moderate cost, 
and it will make a fair figure to illustrate what the young 
naturalist may have to say in the journal he subscribes for,— 
as, for instance, the reports of any of the many chapters of the 
Agassiz Association to President Ballard. Excellent figures 
of fish may be obtained by any of the above methods, if you 
will but go to the trouble of constructing a glass tank of 
clear panes of window-glass, say 10x16, but only an inch or two 
apart, and parallel. In such a tank, filled with the very clearest 
of water, your ordinary-sized fish will be kept constantly in posi- 
tion and quiet. You can photograph through the double glass 
and the water, but you must only have the sky behind it for a 
background. To get an animal life-size you measure it with a 
pair of compasses, and compare this measurement with the image 
on the ground-glass of the camera, after you have finally focused 
to your liking. Your best stock of patience will be demanded in 
the photography of living birds. An entire chapter might be 
written upon this branch of the subject, and then it would hardly 
be exhausted. The same scrupulous care must be exercised in 
reference to position, the accessories, the backgrounds, and the 
rest of it. Very often we get excellent pictures from slightly 
wounded birds, and this was the case with the specimen of the 
Western Red-Tailed Hawk here offered in illustration. I made 
the photograph of this specimen in New Mexico in 1888. 
It will be seen that I selected a rugged pine stump for him to 
stand upon, and this perch was sharply focused before placing 
my subject upon it. Further, it must be noticed that I secureda 
horizon; in other words, the hawk is brought out in strong relief 
against a good sky, which occupies the upper half of the figure. 
It would have been a simple matter to have placed a dead bird_ 
under one of his talons, but it was not done in this case; I have 
duction of '‘ half-tone ” process figures. As it was, however, I had only secured prints 
fixed by hyposulphite of soda. So with the pentagraph. Mr, W. H. Chandlee, the artist of 
the U. S. National Museum, made the very accurate and beautiful drawings from them 
st illustrate this article. But even this method (in which the camera playsan equally 
a ert) ¢ is zo fally as useful, and ¢ one often resorted to by the artist who desires to 
zoology. On this point see the author's letter 
to the editor in Zhe Auk for April, 1891, entitled “‘ Camera Notes for Ornithologists. 

