, smooth, and compact,) and
floats it evenly on the surface of the albumen. Presently she lifts it
very carefully by the turned-up corners and hangs it _bias_, as a
seamstress might say, that is, cornerwise, on a string, to dry. This
"albumenized" paper is sold most extensively to photographers, who find it
cheaper to buy than to prepare it. It keeps for a long time uninjured, and
is "sensitized" when wanted, as we shall see by-and-by.

The amount of photographic paper which is annually imported from France
and Germany has been estimated at fifteen thousand reams. Ten thousand
native partlets--

"_Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves_"--

cackle over the promise of their inchoate offspring, doomed to perish
unfeathered, before fate has decided whether they shall cluck or crow, for
the sole use of the minions of the sun and the feeders of the
caravanseras.

In another portion of the same establishment are great collections of the
chemical substances used in photography. To give an idea of the scale on
which these are required, we may state that the estimate of the annual
consumption of the precious metals for photographic purposes, in this
country, is set down at ten tons for silver and half a ton for gold. Vast
quantities of the hyposulphite of soda, which, we shall see, plays an
important part in the process of preparing the negative plate and
finishing the positive print, are also demanded.

In another building, provided with steam power, which performs much of the
labor, is carried on the great work of manufacturing photographic albums,
cases for portraits, parts of cameras, and of printing pictures from
negatives. Many of these branches of work are very interesting. The
luxurious album, embossed, clasped, gilded, resplendent as a tropical
butterfly, goes through as many transformations as a "purple emperor". It
begins a pasteboard larva, is swathed and pressed and glued into the
condition of a chrysalis, and at last alights on the centre table gorgeous
in gold and velvet, the perfect _imago_. The cases for portraits are made
in lengths, and cut up, somewhat as they say ships are built in Maine, a
mile at a time, to be afterwards sawed across so as to become sloops,
schooners, or such other sized craft as may happen to be wanted.

Each single process in the manufacture of elaborate products of skill
often times seems and is very simple. The workmen in large establishments,
where labor is greatly subdivided,