270 
On tJie Oxymel process 
[no. 4, NEW SERIES, 
XII. On the Oxymel process in Photography. By J. 
Tawse, Madras. 
My difficulties with Oxymel have been, of two kinds, and which 
from what I have heard I believe are very generally met with in 
this country. 
The first of these was rather humiliating in its nature. After a 
picture had been obtained sometimes at a considerable distance 
from my place of residence, on proceeding to.wash the plate after 
the development the entire film of Collodion came away in sections 
leaving nothing but the bare glass. I was at first inclined to at- 
tribute this to a peculiar state of the Collodion, or to an acid bath 
which I was told was productive of this consequence. The Collo- 
dion used iiowever was successively Hockin's, Thomas's, and 
Home's, and my bath when I first commenced was perfectly neutral 
to test paper. It then occurred to me to roughen the margin of 
the plate not simply on the edges but on a space | of an inch all 
round as has been recommended by Mr. Hardwich. This succeed- 
ed admirably, the film adhered perfectly during repeated and vio- 
lent washings. 
The second difficulty I experienced in the production of a nega- 
tive picture was the want of intensity. I followed the details of 
Mr. Llewellen's process minutely, but in each case the result was 
a pale picture, showing ill as a positive and at the same time too 
weak to print. After repeated experiments I find that the remedy 
for this is as follows, I must first premise that the developing so- 
lution I use is the following : 
As soon as the plate is taken out of the frame it is immersed for 
an instant in distilled water, and then placed on the levelling stand. 
A rapid washing so as merely to wet the film is all that is required, 
Pyrogallic Acid. . . . 
Glacial Acetic Acid 
*Alcohol 
1 grain 
20 ms. 
