PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS.*
If one of the arts or sciences really requires a handbook more than another, it is Phothgraphy ; beset as the process is with minute require- ments and difficulties, which can only be properly met by training or ex- perience and practised as it is by hundreds of unprepared amateurs who need guidance, as well as by professional persona who must keep up with the latest improvements. Mr. Sparling's book, which belongs to " Orr's Circle of the Sciences," is about the best we have seen on the sub- ject. In some 200 pages, he glances at the history, sums up the theory, and details the several processes and manipulations of the art ; giving ample explanations and hints—so far as these can be ample in writing— from his own extensive experience, and free quotations from that of others. His professed aim is to be plain, practical, and comprehensive ; and he has succeeded. Occasionally there is some defect in accuracy of laii- guage ; but this is less perceptible in the passages of practical instruction than in those of a more general character. One of the numerous en- gravings which Mr. Sperling gives—a portrait—is noticeable as being the first yet photographed upon the wood without pencilling. An index would add much, and would indeed be essential, to the completeness of the handbook.
Mr. Delamotte's brochure, finically printed in last century type, is simply a description of a process still later than any noticed by Mr. Spar- ling—so rapid and continual are the advances in photography. This process, "recently announced by Mr. Llewelyn, of Penllergare, is we- doubtedly," according to Mr. Delamotte, "the most valuable discovery in the art of photography that has bedn made since Mr. Scott Archer in- troduced collodion." The plates may be prepared a week or a fortnight beforehand, and the image developed a day or two after it is taken.. Photographers will appreciate the advantages of this plan ; but they are warned that, however careful they may have been with other processes, they must be doubly so with this.
• Theory and Practice of the Photographic Art ; including its Chemistry and Optics, with minute Instructions in the Practical Manipulation of the various Pro- cesses, drawn from the Author's daily Practice. By W. Sperling, Assistant to Mr. Fenton, Honorary Secretary to the Photographic Society. The Oxymel Process in Photography. By Philip H. Delamotte, F.S.A., Professor of Drawing in King's College, London.
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