40 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 
had four or five of the best negatives that I had ever been able to 
turnout. I think that every amateur photographer, at the begin- 
ning of his career, ought to write upon the cap of his lens, these 
magical words : ‘‘ Take one every two hours ;” and if he will act 
upon them, it will not be long before he will find that develop- 
ment is only of secondary importance, and that a well-timed plate 
in a normal developer will pretty nearly develop itself. 
A very prolonged development is almost sure to produce a 
chemical fog, and when I can not get a good result from a plate in 
ten minutes manipulation, I am ready to throw it to one side and 
acknowledge the failure. Usually a plate will be fully developed 
in five minutes, and even in less time, unless your developer is 
extremely weak. Much has been said about the development of 
an instantaneous exposure, some contending for a strong developer 
from the first, and others for a weak developer to begin with, and 
gradually strengthen until it has reached the proportions of the 
normal. For my part I have made very few satisfactory negatives 
where the exposure has been less than one-tenth of a second, but 
what few I have got have been made with a normal developer. If 
the image is upon the plate, a normal developer ought to bring it 
out, and if it is not there it can not be coaxed out with a weak 
developer, or forced out with a strong one. 
The bane of an amateur photographer’s existence is the constant 
changing from one developer to another or from one formula to 
another, before he has mastered any. My advice to beginners is, 
not to try to find the best developer there is, for you will never 
succeed. A much better planis to take some good developer (and 
every manufacturer of plates sends a good formula with each box), 
and experiment with it upon plates under-exposed, correctly 
exposed, and over-exposed—that is, if you must experiment—until 
you learn it thoroughly, and then stick to it. You will succeed 
better with an inferior developer handled intelligently, than with a 
much better developer handled in ignorance. | 
Now in connection with the subject of development, let me say a 
few words about the intensification of the negative, although it 
does not properly belong to the subject of dry plate development. 
It sometimes happens that owing to over-exposure a plate has a flat, 
dead look, with no contrast between the lights and shadows; the 
detail is all out, and if it were not for this lack of contrast the nega- 
tive would be a satisfactory one. This defect may be corrected 
