Sisson's Developing Solution.—In answer to S. B.'s inquiry, I beg to say, that I have not tried the above solution as a bath. I have always poured it on, believing that it was easier to observe the progress of the picture by that mode. If S. B. will forward me his address, I shall be happy to enter more minutely into my mode of operating with it than I can through the medium of "N. & Q." I have received other favourable testimony as to the value of my developing fluid for glass positives.
While I am writing, will you allow me to ask your photographic correspondents whether any of them have tried Mr. Müller's paper process referred to by Mr. Delamotte at p. 145. of his work? It was first announced in the Athenæum of Nov. 2, 1851. When I first commenced photography (June, 1852), I tried the process; and from what I did with it, when I was almost entirely ignorant of the manipulation, I am inclined to think it a valuable process. The sharpness of the tracery in my church windows, in a picture I took by the process, is remarkable. Mr. Delamotte truly says: "This is a most striking discovery, as it supersedes the necessity of any developing agent after the light has acted on the paper." Mr. Müller says, that simple washing in water seems to be sufficient to fix the picture. This is also a striking discovery, and totally unlike any other very sensitive process that I am acquainted with; and more striking still, that the process should not have been more practised.
J. Lawson Sisson.
Edingthorpe Rectory.
Replies to Minor Queries.
Robert Drury (Vol. v., p. 533.; Vol. vii., p. 485.; vol. viii., p. 104.).—I believe the Journal of Robert Drury to be a genuine book of travels and adventures, and here is my voucher:
"The best and most authentic account ever given of Madagascar was published in 1729, by Robert Drury, who being shipwrecked in the Degrave East Indiaman, on the south side of that island, in 1702, being then a boy, lived there as a slave fifteen years, and after his return to England, among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture."—John Duncombe, M. A., one of the six preachers in Christ Church, Canterbury, 1773.
Mr. Duncombe quotes several statements from Drury which coincide with those of the Reverend William Hirst, the astronomer, who touched at Madagascar, on his voyage to India, in 1759. Ten years afterwards Mr. Hirst perished in the Aurora, and with him the author of The Shipwreck.
Bolton Corney.