chloride (common salt),
and three ounces of your stock solution of gold. Add to this bath three
ounces of the stock solution of gold that has had three drops of
saturated solution of bicarbonate of soda added to it. This bath should
be alkaline, and you can test it with red litmus paper. If it turns the
paper slightly blue, it is ready for use. Put this bath in a flat tray
(porcelain preferably), and then lay the prints in it face down. Move
them all the time, to insure evenness of tone and to prevent spots. It
is a good plan to keep drawing out the undermost one, and putting it on
the top.

The prints are of a reddish-brown color when they are put into the
toning bath, and in about fifteen or twenty minutes they begin to turn
to a rich purplish black. Experience will teach the amateur at what
point the prints should be removed from this bath. They should lie long
enough to have every tinge of red entirely removed, and yet not long
enough to turn the prints to a dull gray.

When the prints have been sufficiently toned, they should be thoroughly
washed and then put into the fixing bath. This bath is made of one
gallon of water, one pound of sodic hyposulphite, one tablespoonful
sodic bicarbonate, and one tablespoonful common salt.

These ingredients should be thoroughly dissolved, and then a portion put
in a tray. This tray must be kept for the fixing bath and not be used
for any other purpose. The prints are put in the tray in the same manner
as in the toning bath, and moved continually until they are fixed.

This process should take fifteen minutes, or, if the bath is rather
cool, the time may be extended to twenty minutes.

After the prints have been removed from the fixing bath they are put in
a strong solution of salt and water, to prevent their blistering. After
they have been in this solution for about five minutes they are then
ready for their final washing. The prints should be left in running
water for some hours, and there is very little danger of washing them
too long or too thoroughly.

After every trace of the fixing bath has been removed, the prints may be
taken from the water and dried between sheets of chemically-pure
blotting paper. They will not curl up when dried in this way, as they do
when simply exposed to the air.

The prints are now ready to mount. This is by no means the least
difficult nor the least important of the many processes necessary to
secure a successful picture. Even if care h