SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
413 
photograph is then transferred from the oiled paper to card-board, by 
simply pasting the former face downward on the latter, and when dry 
using moisture for removing the oiled paper. By the same process, closely 
resembling that of the earliest French photographic experimentalist — it 
will be easily seen that the image may be transferred to stone for litho- 
graphic purposes. 
The objections to this method are, the exactness required in regulating 
the exposure to light, and the imperfect transparency of the oiled paper 
through which the image is printed. The prints we have seen by the 
process, although very soft, were poor and tame, wanting in clearness of 
definition and vigour of effect. 
Since then, a process of printing in carbon, giving the very finest results, 
and divested, we are informed, of all such objections, has been announced 
at a meeting of the South London Photographic Society, and by the same 
gentleman, Mr. G. W. Simpson. The specimens exhibited on this occasion 
were quite equal to the best silver prints we have seen, and were produced 
by Mr. Swan, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, an amateur photographer of no 
mean skill. It is uncertain at present whether this valuable process will 
be preserved as a secret for the benefit of the inventor, or given up to the 
whole photographic world for the benefit of the art and the advantage of 
the public. We have been informed that Mr. Swan leans to the more 
generous idea ; if so, he is indeed an amateur in the loftiest sense of the 
word. 
The reported Watt Photographs . — Fresh light has been thrown upon the 
alleged early photographs, and their claims appear thereby more doubtful 
than ever. Mr. Sutton has pointed out that, if the paper pictures were 
produced by the aid of a lens, internal evidence would show that such a 
lens must have been a more perfect optical instrument than any modern 
photographers can obtain. Some of the evidence first advanced has been 
completely set aside, and evidence in support of fresh claims takes its 
place. At the January meeting of the London Photographic Society, the 
subject was again discussed at some length. With regard to the photo- 
graph of a breakfast-table, described as the work of Thomas Wedgwood, 
in 1792, Dr. Diamond and Mr. Malone brought forward photographs of 
the same subject taken twenty years since by Fox Talbot. A letter from 
Mr. Robert Hunt gave reasons for denying that the paper pictures were 
produced by light, although he believed there was no doubt that those on 
metal were photographs, taken probably by a resin process, similar to 
that used by Wiepce, in 1814. Doubts were also thrown upon the veracity 
of Mr. Price, in a letter, and part of a pamphlet, by a grandson of 
Matthew Boulton, who, while admitting that light was the agent most pro- 
bably used in the production of the Soho reproductions, adds, <! accuracy 
was not Mr. Price’s forte.” A manufacturer of copper plates thought 
those on which the pictures in question were taken could not be more 
than twenty-four years old. On the other hand, a letter from Mr. Fair- 
holt, who had been consulted as an expert in matters of this kind, 
expressed a conviction that the pictures were really photographs. Mr. 
Boulton, in the pamphlet above mentioned, also affirms that the library 
which was said to have been cleared out twenty years since, was really 
