364

* EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.

produce results scarcely inferior to those formerly obtained by the ponderous and expensive apparatus in use for the large photographs, which are so much in vogue and so admi­rable when judiciously executed.

It will not escape attention that, on the one hand, the results of photographic science and art are so cheapened and perfected as to come almost within the cost of the most im­perfect manual methods of pictorial reproduction ; and on the other, that the processes which are the means of the art have been so far simplified and reduced to the condition of com­mercial productions, that neither lack of time nor technical training need prevent any person having even a low average of manual dexterity from becoming, for all practical pur­poses, a successful photographer. There remains one impor­tant desideratum, already alluded to (a substitute for glass), with the attainment of w T hich photography can place in the hands of every person of average intelligence and taste, most portable means of making, at an expense of time and trouble quite trivial, representations more accurate than art can pro­duce, of all visible objects which come within the chromatic conditions imposed.

The weight of glass and the liability to fracture of the negatives when finished, have been the great drawbacks to the use of photography in remote and not easily accessible regions; but even with this drawback, a tourist may carry literally in his pockets, photographic apparatus, wfith dry plates, sufficient to do all the work required in many days, and without exceeding the weight one man could carry on his back, enough of all material required to cross a continent on foot and secure negatives of a small but available size of every object most worthy reproducing, up to several hun­dreds, and these may be reproduced in a most perfect and superb manner at a cost of less than one cent each to the producers.

Regarded from this point of view it would seem that pho­tography need not go much farther; but we may confidently expect that even this will be inefficience compared with what will be done when what is now being sought for is attained.

It is to be hoped that the Exhibition about to be held in Philadelphia will not let the opportunity be lost of doing