In order to avoid the risk of dust involved in this process, I tried other means of arriving at similar results and with success, for the plates I now submit to you have been simply rubbed or polished, as I may say, with a mixture of one part of Canada balsam to three parts of turpentine, using either a small tuft of French wadding or a small piece of soft rag for the purpose, continuing the rubbing until the plate is polished nearly dry. This method is particularly successful, rendering the clear parts of the sky like bare glass. I have here a plate which is heavily veiled--almost fogged, in fact--one half of which I have treated in this way, showing that the half so treated is beautifully clear, while the other half is so veiled as to be apparently useless. I have tried to still further simplify this necessary clearing of those plates, and find that soaking tor twelve hours in a saturated solution of alum, after washing the hypo out of the plate, is successful in a large number of cases; and where it is successful there is no further trouble with the transparency, except to mount it after it becomes dry. Where it is not entirely successful I put the plate into a solution of citric acid, four ounces to a pint of water, for about one minute, and have in nearly all cases succeeded in getting a beautifully-clear plate. The picture must not be left long in the citric acid solution, or it will float off; neither do I like using citric acid until after trying the alum, for a similar reason. I may mention that I recommend a short exposure in the printing-frame and slow development, in order to get sufficient intensity. Of course the exposure is always made to a gas or petroleum light. I also still prefer the old method of making the ferrous oxalate solution, pouring it back into the bottle each time after using, and using it for two or three months, keeping the bottle full from a stock bottle, and occasionally putting a little dry ferrous oxalate into the bottle and shaking it up, allowing it to settle before using next time. By treating it in this way it retains its power fairly well for a long time; and as it becomes less active I give a little longer exposure, balancing one against the other. Making the ferrous oxalate solution from two saturated solutions of iron sulphate and potassium oxalate has not succeeded so well with me for transparencies. The tone of the picture is not so black as when developed by the old method; and I do not like gray transparencies for the lantern. I also recommend very slow gelatine plates, about twice as sensitive as wet collodion--not more, if I can help it.