Every country and district, and even different parts of the same district, have a Flora and Geology peculiar to themselves; and the artist who undertakes to represent its beauties owes to truth the same obligations as the botanist who is to describe its plants, or the mineralogist its rocks and stones. The critic could not, in former times, expect more details from his unaided pencil than it has generally furnished; but with the means now at his command, he must collect, like the naturalist, all the materials for his subject. After the camera has given him the great features of his landscape, he must appeal to it for accurate delineations of its minuter parts,—the trunks, and stems, and leafage of his trees—the dipping strata of its sandstone beds—the contortions of its kneaded gneiss, or the ruder features of its trap and its granite. For the most important of these details he will find the camera, as at present constructed, of little service. It is fitted only to copy _surfaces_; and therefore, when directed to solid bodies, such as living beings, statues, &c., it gives false and hideous representations of them, as I have shewn in a preceding chapter. It is peculiarly defective when applied to parts of bodies at different distances from it, and of a less diameter than the lens. The photograph of a cube taken by a lens of a greater diameter, will display _five_ of its sides in a position, when its true perspective representation is simply a single square of its surface. When applied to trees, and shrubs, and flowers, its pictures are still more unsatisfactory. Every stem and leaf smaller than the lens, though absolutely opaque, is transparent, and leaves and stems behind and beyond are seen like ghosts through the photographic image. [Illustration: FIG. 48.]