moon, and portraits of the inhabitants of Jupiter! One of the latest advances in the art of Photography has been the engraving on steel-plates by the action of light, by which means more forcible effects have been obtained than by the impressions of light upon paper. Mr. Fox Talbot has distinguished himself in thus fixing the images on steel, as he was the first to impress them upon paper. In his method of doing so, he covers the steel plate with a solution of isinglass and bichromate of potass, and placing a collodion negative picture upon it, he exposes it to the action of light. When the picture is sufficiently impressed, he etches it into the plate by means of bichloride of platinum. M. Niepce, the nephew of the original inventor of Photography, has produced the same effect by reviving the first processes adopted by his uncle; using, as he did, bitumen, dissolved in essential oil of lavender, to cover the plates. Two other foreign photographers, M. Poitevin and M. Pretschi, have also successfully directed their attention to engraving the images of the camera, which has now obtained a high degree of perfection. It is well worth notice that these most recent improvements in Photography are but further developments of the original designs of M. Niepce, who not only succeeded in etching the pictures impressed by the light of the sun on his metal tablets, but made use of a glass surface, on which the now generally adopted collodion process depends. DISSOLVING VIEWS. There are no optical illusions more extraordinary than those shown in the exhibition of Dissolving Views. The effects of the changes in the diorama are only such as are seen in nature, the same scene being represented under different circumstances, and the marvel in that case is that such beautiful and natural effects can be produced on the same canvas. But Dissolving Views set nature at defiance, and exhibit metamorphoses as great as can be conceived by the wildest fancy. Whilst, for instance, the spectator is looking at the interior of a church, he sees the objects gradually assuming different appearances. The columns that support the vaulted roof begin to fade away, and their places are occupied by other forms, which gradually become better defined and stronger, and a tree, a house, or, it may be, a rock, thrusts the columns out of view, and the roof dims into blue sky, chequered with clouds. The original view thus entirely disappears, and the scene is changed from the interior of a church to open country, or to a rocky valley. This is done, not by changing at once one scene into another, but by substituting different individual objects, which at first appear like faint shadows, and then, becoming more and more vivid, at length altogether supplant their predecessors on the field of view, and will, in their turn, be extinguished by others.