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make the solution tolerably acid, and added one drachm of 
acetic acid to ninety ounces of bath solution. With this acid 
bath I took a great many instantaneous stereoscopic views, and 
several negatives 11x9 with the triplet, in less than a second. 
Within a mile or two of Calcutta there was at that time a 
most beautiful jungle of palms, cocoa-nuts, bamboos, &c. — a 
perfect paradise for photography. All this, or the greater 
part of it, together with the splendid trees in the Botanical 
Gardens, have since been destroyed by the great cyclone. 
Here I used Thomas’s collodion, newly iodised with mag- 
nesium, with great success. After being iodised a few days, 
however, the film invariably split at the lower edge of the 
plate when immersed in the nitrate bath. The crack was 
about two inches long and one-eighth broad, extending up- 
wards. I should be glad if any one could explain how this was 
caused. After this I used Mawson’s collodion almost entirely. 
Once I mixed the two together, and found them work well. 
The chief drawback to wet photography in India is the 
enormous weight of apparatus required. It was bad enough 
by railway, but when I had to transport three heavy boxes 
by horse dak , as the miserable public carriages are called, it 
became simply ruinous. 
My visit to the ruins of Gaur, in the Maldah district, 
some 200 miles above Calcutta, gave me more pleasure than 
anything I saw in India. From Calcutta to Rajmahal there 
is a railway. There I put my baggage into bullock carts to 
cross the Ganges, and proceed to Gaur, a distance of thirty 
or forty miles. I myself rode to the ferry, and was delighted 
to see a couple of elephants waiting on the opposite bank to 
convey me to Mootrapore, the residence of an indigo planter — 
the most hospitable man in the world, and the slayer of at 
least 200 tigers. Next day I went on with the elephants, 
and the day following arrived at Gaur, found a tent pitched, 
and. the carts unloaded. 
Gaur was the ancient capital of Bengal, and the ruins of 
the city, surrounded by dense jungle, are magnificent. My 
