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previous instance ; and from this gentleman’s experience in matters 
photographic and microscopic, we may regard it as authoritative. Then 
we have the statement of Mr. Price, that at the time of the removal 
from the old house a camera was discovered, which was afterwards lent 
by him to a local schoolmaster who gave his attention to the modern 
branches of photography, and this person produced some good pictures 
by its aid, and expressed great satisfaction with the lens of the instru- 
ment. This camera, however, is not now forthcoming. 
Next we have accounts of a society — “ The Lunar Society,” that met 
at Boulton’s house (i every full-moon night ” — that included as members 
such men as Samuel Galton, of Birmingham ; Matthew Boulton, of Soho ; 
James Watt, of Soho ; Captain Keir, Mr. Edgeworth, Dr. Withering, Dr. 
Rooke, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Parr, Dr. Davison, Mr. Day, Sir W. Herschel, 
Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr. Aveling, Dr. Small, Benjamin Frank- 
lin, Dr. Black, Mr. Roebuck, Dr. Johnson of Lichfield, Mr. Wedgwood; 
—who gave great attention to these pictures, stayed very late at night, 
and, according to old Townshend’s version, were in the habit of “ putting 
their heads in a hag,” an operation not unknown to peripatetic photo- 
graphers of the present day who give themselves to dry-plate processes, 
but more probably pointing to the cloth cloak that descended from the 
ceiling in old-fashioned camera-obscura rooms wherein the lens was fitted 
above the roof, used for the purpose of excluding extraneous light, and 
probably used by the society for the purpose of making drawings of the 
moon or other astronomical diagrams or observations. As the elder 
Wedgwood was a member of this society, it is quite natural that he 
should have given his sons information as to their proceedings, which led 
to the investigations of Davy and Wedgwood at a later period, hut with 
the curious result that they could not “ fix ” the images they produced by 
means of silver salts, while the subjects of the present investigation show 
that if they were photographically produced, a fixing method^ had been 
discovered at an earlier date : if so, why was this important discovery 
lost to the world when old members of the Lunar Society were in 
existence ? 
That the process, whatever its nature, was one of great importance, may 
be gleaned from the fact, vouched for by an existing document, that Sir W. 
Beechy, an artist of considerable standing, petitioned the members of the 
Lunar Society to discontinue their researches and not to divulge the secret 
of the process by which these paper pictures were produced, as he feared 
that if it became generally known the artists would be ruined. Could 
mere facsimiles, hand-produced by aid of a camera-obscura, give cause 
for alarm to such a sensible man as Sir W. Beechy? At any rate, 
Government is supposed to have exerted its influence to suspend this 
branch of Messrs. Boulton and Watts’s trade, as in a letter addressed by 
Boulton to Lord Dartmouth (then Lord Chamberlain), he declines the 
offer of a pension for the person that held the secret, and states that the 
scheme would probably die out more quickly from the memory of Egerton 
if the idea of a pension was not broached to him. 
This is the position of affairs of <c the Watt photographs” mystery; and 
at the next meeting of the London Photographic Society an attempt will 
